The former Google chief executive, who earned his master’s and doctorate in computer science at Berkeley, began leading Caltech’s trustees on Oct. 31 and told Axios that large data centers should have their own power and be built in the country’s “empty spaces.”
Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google, has been elected chairman of the California Institute of Technology’s Board of Trustees, the Pasadena university announced on Monday. He began serving on Oct. 31.
In an interview with Axios published the same day, Mr. Schmidt took up the question now shaping energy and land-use fights in California and across the country: where the large data centers that power artificial intelligence should go.
“Let me state categorically that large data centers should not be near population centers. Why would this be controversial? And they should have their own power systems,” he said. “One of the great things about America is we have an awful lot of empty spaces. Put them there.”
The Berkeley connection
Mr. Schmidt earned a master of science in 1979 and a Ph.D. in 1982, both in computer science, at the University of California, Berkeley, after a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton. His 1982 dissertation, “Controlling Large Software Development in a Distributed Environment,” is held by Berkeley’s electrical engineering and computer sciences department, and Caltech’s announcement confirms both Berkeley degrees.
The new role
Caltech said Mr. Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, have given more than $250 million to the institute, including support for the Caltech-led Deep Synoptic Array, a radio-astronomy project that is part of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Observatory System. Since 2023 he has co-taught an undergraduate course at Caltech with Richard M. Murray, a professor of control and dynamical systems and bioengineering, on how new technologies become useful products. Kent Kresa, the chairman emeritus of Northrop Grumman and a past chairman of the board, was elected vice chairman.
“Over the years, through teaching at Caltech and supporting research programs across the Institute, I have seen firsthand how fundamental science, engineering rigor and intellectual freedom drive discovery and innovation,” Mr. Schmidt said in Caltech’s announcement. Caltech’s president, Ray Jayawardhana, called him “an inspired choice to lead the Board.”
Caltech also manages NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which Mr. Kresa mentioned in his statement, so the chairmanship puts Mr. Schmidt at the head of the governing board of one of California’s most important research institutions.
The post adds to a portfolio that already spans business, philanthropy and national security. After leading Google as chief executive from 2001 to 2011, Mr. Schmidt was executive chairman of Google and then of its parent company, Alphabet, through 2018. Since 2025 he has been chairman and chief executive of Relativity Space, a Long Beach rocket company. He was the founding chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board from 2016 to 2020, chaired the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, and in 2021 founded the Special Competitive Studies Project, a nonprofit focused on American competitiveness in AI and technology.
The data-center argument
Mr. Schmidt’s remarks on siting arrive as California weighs the same question. Data centers draw large amounts of electricity and water, and several California communities have debated whether and where to allow them. Statewide, voters rejected Proposition 45, which would have streamlined environmental review for projects including data centers, The Inquirer reported on Saturday, and both sides have said they will take the fight to the Legislature.
His prescription, remote sites with their own power, is close to what federal policy has encouraged. The Trump administration’s AI Action Plan, released in July 2025, called for faster federal permitting for data centers and the power supplies that serve them, and the administration has offered federal land for such projects. Mr. Schmidt did not address California’s rules directly in the interview.
He was blunt about the industry’s standing with voters. “Our industry does a terrible job of marketing our benefits,” he told Axios. “We talk about all the negatives without talking the positives, and people are much more likely to index their minds on the negatives.”
He also said regulation was coming and was not to be feared. “AI will be regulated because it’s powerful, and we should work to have good regulation. There’s nothing wrong with that. Cars are regulated. Airplanes are regulated,” he said. AI companies, he added, are “under enormous regulatory scrutiny” and “enormous potential liability.”
On research, he predicted that “all future research, which is fundamental to American leadership, will have a professor, a bunch of graduate students or postdocs, and a whole bunch of agents working together,” and said that change is happening “this quarter.”
Why it matters here
For California, the combination is notable: a prominent voice in American technology policy now chairs a California university that runs a NASA laboratory, leads a California rocket company, and is arguing publicly that the largest AI facilities should be kept away from where people live and should generate their own electricity. Those are the questions state lawmakers, utilities and local planning commissions are now being asked to answer.
The Special Competitive Studies Project declined to comment. The Inquirer also asked Caltech’s communications office and Schmidt Sciences, the philanthropy Mr. Schmidt co-founded, for comment on Monday; neither had responded by publication.
Marcus Thibodeaux covers UC Berkeley alumni in business, startups, venture capital, industry and government, from Sand Hill Road boardrooms to Sacramento and Washington, for the Inquirer’s Berkeley Alumni desk. More from Marcus Thibodeaux
