Eric Schmidt

Described as

software engineer, businessman, former Google CEO

Other names

Eric Emerson Schmidt, Eric E. Schmidt

Born

April 27, 1955 · 2 references

Born in

Washington, D.C. · 3 references

Name at birth

Eric Emerson Schmidt

Citizen of

United States · 2 references

Occupation

art collector; engineer; university teacher; computer scientist · 1 reference; businessperson · 2 references; software engineer · 3 references; electrical engineer; entrepreneur · 1 reference

Positions held

chief executive officer (2001–2011); board of directors member (2001–2019) · 1 reference

Worked for

Alphabet Inc.; Apple Inc.; Stanford University

Education

University of California, Berkeley (2 times) (1979–1982); Princeton University (–1976); Yorktown High School (1968–1972) · 1 reference

Member of

American Academy of Arts and Sciences; National Academy of Engineering; Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Meetings · 1 reference; National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (2019–) · 1 reference; United States President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

Awards

IEEE Founders Medal (2014) · 1 reference; Ellis Island Medal of Honor

Field

computer engineering; software engineering · 1 reference

Spouse

Wendy Schmidt (1980–)

Children

Sophie Schmidt

Lived in

Blacksburg; Atherton; Washington, D.C.

Website

https://ericschmidt.com/

Wikipedias with a page

58

Wikidata item Q92747 (wikidata.org/wiki/Q92747), public domain (CC0). Copied November 13, 2026.

Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the chief executive officer of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and technical advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020. Since 2025, he has been the CEO of Relativity Space, an aerospace manufacturing company. As of 2026, he is one of the wealthiest people in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with an estimated net worth of US$64.3 billion.
As an intern at Bell Labs, Schmidt in 1975 was co-author of Lex, a software program to generate lexical analysers for the Unix computer operating system. In 1983, he joined Sun Microsystems and worked in various roles. From 1997 to 2001, he was chief executive officer (CEO) of Novell. Schmidt has been on various other boards in academia and industry, including the boards of trustees for Carnegie Mellon University, Apple, Princeton University, and the Mayo Clinic. He also owns a minority stake in the National Football League (NFL) team Washington Commanders.
In 2008, during his tenure as Google's chairman, Schmidt campaigned for Barack Obama, and subsequently became a member of Obama's President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In the meantime, Schmidt had left Google, and founded philanthropic venture Schmidt Futures, in 2017. Under his tenure, Schmidt Futures provided the compensation for two science-office employees in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Schmidt became the first chair of the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in 2018, while keeping shares of Alphabet stock, worth over $5.3 billion in 2019. In October 2021, Schmidt founded the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) and has since served as its chairman. Schmidt had a major influence on the Biden administration's science policy after 2021, especially shaping policies on AI.

Born, in its opening lines

April 27, 1955

From the Wikipedia article “Eric Schmidt” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt), by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Copied November 13, 2026; not changed.