ES Eric Schmidt ANGEL INVESTMENTS AI Q FS ES
Former Google CEO & Executive Chairman

Strategic Angel Investments in
Next-Generation Technology Companies

Leveraging four decades of transformative technology leadership experience to identify, invest in, and strategically guide exceptional founders building breakthrough artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cybersecurity, and enterprise software companies that will define the future of global innovation and digital transformation.

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195+
Portfolio Companies
52
Successful Exits
$2.8B
Largest Exit Value
22
Years Active
Investment Philosophy

Strategic Angel Investment Framework

Our systematic approach to angel investing is built upon decades of technology leadership experience, deep technical expertise, and a comprehensive understanding of global market dynamics. We focus exclusively on breakthrough innovations that demonstrate the potential to fundamentally transform industries, create new market categories, and generate significant positive societal impact through advanced technological solutions.

01 — Technical Leadership Excellence

Deep Technology Innovation & Scientific Rigor

We prioritize investments in companies founded and led by individuals with exceptional technical depth, advanced scientific training, and demonstrated track records in developing breakthrough technologies. Our focus centers on innovations that solve complex, fundamental problems through proprietary technological approaches, advanced algorithmic development, and novel scientific methodologies that create sustainable competitive advantages and substantial technological barriers to entry.

  • PhD-level technical founders with deep domain expertise in computer science, engineering, physics, mathematics, or related scientific disciplines
  • Proprietary technology platforms with robust intellectual property portfolios, defensive patent strategies, and defensible technological advantages
  • Breakthrough innovations in artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum computing, advanced materials science, and computational technologies
  • Advanced algorithmic approaches that demonstrate measurable performance improvements and scalability advantages over existing solutions
  • Scalable technical architectures designed for global enterprise deployment, massive user adoption, and long-term technological evolution
  • Strong technical teams with proven track records in research, development, and successful technology commercialization
  • Evidence of peer-reviewed research publications, academic recognition, patents, and standing within relevant scientific communities
  • Clear technological differentiation that creates significant barriers to entry and sustainable competitive moats
  • Technical advisors and scientific collaborators from leading academic institutions and research organizations
  • Demonstrated ability to attract top-tier technical talent and build world-class engineering and research teams
02 — Market Transformation Potential

Emerging Technology Sectors & Platform Opportunities

Our investment focus centers on emerging technology sectors that are positioned to define the next generation of technological advancement, economic growth, and digital transformation. We maintain deep conviction and extensive experience in artificial intelligence applications, quantum computing development, advanced cybersecurity solutions, enterprise software platforms, and financial technology innovations that demonstrate clear paths to market leadership, category creation, and global scalability.

  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning platforms with enterprise-grade applications across multiple industries and vertical markets
  • Quantum computing hardware development, software applications, algorithm optimization, and practical commercial implementation strategies
  • Advanced cybersecurity solutions addressing evolving threat landscapes, zero-trust architectures, and next-generation security paradigms
  • Enterprise software platforms incorporating AI-driven automation, intelligent decision-making, and operational efficiency optimization
  • Financial technology innovations leveraging computational advantages, alternative data sources, and advanced analytics capabilities
  • Healthcare technology platforms with significant clinical impact potential, regulatory pathway clarity, and scalable deployment models
  • Infrastructure technologies enabling cloud computing, distributed systems, edge computing, and next-generation computing architectures
  • Climate technology solutions with measurable environmental impact, commercial viability, and global deployment potential
  • Autonomous systems, robotics platforms, and intelligent automation technologies with broad industrial applications
  • Advanced materials science applications in semiconductors, energy storage, and manufacturing technologies
03 — Exceptional Founding Team Leadership

Visionary Leadership & Execution Excellence

We invest in founding teams that combine visionary leadership, exceptional execution capabilities, and deep industry expertise with the proven ability to build and scale world-class organizations. Our focus is on entrepreneurs who demonstrate the strategic thinking, operational excellence, and leadership skills necessary to navigate complex technical challenges, competitive market dynamics, and rapid organizational growth while maintaining technological innovation and market leadership positions.

  • Founding teams with complementary expertise spanning technology development, business strategy, and market execution
  • Proven track records of successful technology commercialization, product development, and market penetration
  • Experience building and leading high-performance technical teams, research organizations, and product development groups
  • Strategic vision for long-term market development, technology evolution, and competitive positioning
  • Demonstrated ability to attract world-class talent, strategic partners, and follow-on investment capital
  • Strong communication skills and ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholder audiences
  • Previous experience with venture capital funding, corporate partnerships, and strategic business development
  • Commitment to building sustainable, ethical technology companies with positive societal impact
  • Board-level experience or advisory roles with other technology companies or academic institutions
  • International market experience and global perspective on technology deployment and adoption
04 — Strategic Value Creation & Market Impact

Long-Term Value Creation & Global Market Leadership

Our investment approach focuses on companies with clear pathways to significant value creation, sustainable market leadership, and transformative impact on global industries and society. We seek opportunities where our strategic guidance, operational expertise, extensive network, and technology leadership experience can provide substantial value to accelerate company growth, market penetration, and long-term competitive positioning.

  • Clear business models with multiple revenue streams, scalable economics, and defensible competitive advantages
  • Large addressable markets with significant growth potential and multiple expansion opportunities
  • Technology platforms that can serve multiple industries, customer segments, and geographic markets
  • Strategic partnership opportunities with Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and academic institutions
  • Regulatory and compliance strategies for highly regulated industries and international market expansion
  • Exit strategy potential through strategic acquisitions, public market offerings, or industry consolidation
  • Positive societal impact through technology advancement, job creation, and economic development
  • Environmental sustainability and climate impact considerations in technology development and deployment
  • Ethical technology development practices and commitment to responsible innovation principles
  • Long-term vision for technology evolution and adaptation to changing market conditions and technological paradigms
Investment Portfolio

Portfolio Companies & Strategic Investments

Our comprehensive portfolio represents a carefully curated collection of transformative technology companies led by exceptional founders across multiple cutting-edge sectors. Each investment reflects our commitment to technical excellence, market leadership potential, and the demonstrated ability to create significant value through innovative technology solutions, superior execution capabilities, and strategic market positioning.

Artificial Intelligence

Inflection AI

Personal AI Assistant Platform & Conversational Intelligence

Inflection AI represents the forefront of personal artificial intelligence development, creating AI systems that understand and respond to human needs with unprecedented sophistication and emotional intelligence. Founded by Mustafa Suleyman, former co-founder of DeepMind and former VP of AI Product at Google, alongside Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, the company has assembled one of the world's most powerful AI training infrastructures. Their flagship product, Pi, demonstrates breakthrough capabilities in conversational AI, combining advanced large language models with safety-first development principles and human-centric design philosophy. The company has built a massive computational infrastructure including 22,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, positioning them as a leader in the personal AI revolution and the future of human-AI interaction technologies.

$1.3B
Current Valuation
$1.5B
Total Funding Raised
22,000
H100 GPU Cluster
Large Language Models Conversational AI AI Safety Personal Assistant Technology Human-AI Interaction Emotional Intelligence
Quantum Computing

SandboxAQ

Enterprise Quantum-AI Platform & Commercial Applications

SandboxAQ is a pioneering enterprise software company delivering breakthrough computational solutions at the intersection of artificial intelligence and quantum technologies. Spun out of Alphabet in 2022 with significant strategic backing, the company focuses on transformative applications in molecular simulation, financial optimization, sensing technologies, and cybersecurity across industries including pharmaceuticals, materials science, automotive, telecommunications, and financial services. Led by CEO Jack Hidary, SandboxAQ has developed quantum-AI hybrid platforms that enable organizations to solve previously intractable computational problems, providing significant competitive advantages through advanced technological capabilities, algorithmic innovations, and practical quantum computing applications for enterprise deployment.

$500M
Series B Funding
Fortune 100
Enterprise Clients
2022
Investment Year
Quantum Simulation Drug Discovery Financial Modeling Quantum Sensing Hybrid Computing Enterprise Software
Cybersecurity

Shape Security

AI-Powered Bot Protection Platform • Strategic Exit Success

Shape Security revolutionized cybersecurity through pioneering AI-powered protection against automated attacks, fraud, and abuse across web and mobile applications. Founded by Derek Smith and Sumit Agarwal, former Google security engineers, the company developed breakthrough technology utilizing advanced machine learning algorithms, behavioral analysis, and real-time threat detection to identify and mitigate sophisticated bot attacks while maintaining seamless user experiences. Shape's innovative approach to cybersecurity helped protect major global enterprises including Netflix, Under Armour, and Williams-Sonoma from evolving automated threats, ultimately leading to a highly successful $1 billion acquisition by F5 Networks in 2019, demonstrating the significant market value and strategic importance of AI-driven security solutions.

$1.0B
Exit Valuation
F5 Networks
Strategic Acquirer
2019
Exit Year
Bot Detection Fraud Prevention Machine Learning Security Web Application Security Behavioral Analysis Real-time Protection
Financial Technology

Upstart

AI-Powered Lending Platform • Public Market Success

Upstart has fundamentally transformed the lending industry through artificial intelligence and machine learning, enabling banks and credit unions to expand access to affordable credit while delivering superior risk-adjusted returns to institutional investors. Founded by Dave Girouard, former President of Google Enterprise, the company's proprietary AI platform analyzes thousands of data points including education, employment history, and other alternative data sources to assess creditworthiness more accurately than traditional FICO credit scoring methods. This innovation has democratized access to credit for millions of underserved borrowers while reducing default rates for lending partners. Since completing its successful IPO on NASDAQ in 2020, Upstart has demonstrated the significant market potential and scalability of AI-driven financial services, serving as a model for technology-enabled financial innovation and inclusive lending practices.

$3.2B
Market Capitalization
NASDAQ: UPST
Public Trading
2020
IPO Year
Credit Assessment AI Alternative Data Financial Inclusion Risk Modeling Banking Technology Public Company
Enterprise Software

AppSheet

No-Code Development Platform • Google Cloud Acquisition

AppSheet pioneered the no-code application development revolution, enabling businesses to create sophisticated mobile and web applications without traditional programming expertise or extensive development resources. Founded by Praveen Seshadri, a former Microsoft executive, the company's innovative platform democratized app development by allowing citizen developers and business users to build complex business applications using natural language interfaces, visual development tools, and intelligent automation capabilities. AppSheet's technology enabled organizations to rapidly digitize business processes, automate workflows, and create custom solutions that integrate seamlessly with existing enterprise systems. The company's strategic acquisition by Google Cloud in 2020 significantly expanded Google's enterprise software capabilities, validated the massive market opportunity in no-code development platforms, and positioned AppSheet's technology as a core component of Google's digital transformation offerings.

Google Cloud
Strategic Acquirer
Strategic
Exit Type
2020
Acquisition Year
No-Code Platform Citizen Development Enterprise Mobility Digital Transformation Workflow Automation Google Integration
Artificial Intelligence

Character.AI

AI Character Creation Platform & Interactive Entertainment

Character.AI has revolutionized human-computer interaction and entertainment through its breakthrough platform that enables users to create, customize, and interact with AI characters spanning historical figures, fictional personalities, celebrities, and entirely original personas. Founded by Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, both former Google researchers who previously led development on LaMDA and other foundational large language model technologies at Google, the company has created one of the most engaging and addictive AI platforms with users spending unprecedented amounts of time in conversations with AI characters. The platform demonstrates remarkable capabilities in maintaining character consistency, emotional depth, and contextual understanding across extended conversations, positioning Character.AI at the forefront of entertainment technology and the emerging field of AI companionship and interactive digital experiences.

$1B+
Unicorn Valuation
30M+
Monthly Active Users
2022
Investment Year
Character AI User Engagement Creative AI Entertainment Technology Interactive Media Social Platform
Executive Leadership

Technology Leadership & Strategic Vision

Drawing on over four decades of transformative technology leadership, strategic vision, operational excellence, and pioneering business development to guide portfolio companies, shape the future of technology innovation, and accelerate global digital transformation across industries and markets.

Dr. Eric Schmidt

Dr. Eric Schmidt

Executive Chairman & Strategic Angel Investor

Dr. Eric Schmidt is a technologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who has spent over four decades at the forefront of technology innovation, strategic leadership, and global business transformation. As the former Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman of Google, he played a transformative and decisive role in evolving the company from a promising search engine startup into one of the world's most valuable, influential, and technologically advanced corporations, fundamentally reshaping how billions of people access information, communicate, and conduct business globally.

During his transformative tenure as CEO from 2001 to 2011, Dr. Schmidt oversaw Google's extraordinary expansion from 200 employees to over 20,000 team members across dozens of countries, while the company's market capitalization grew from $23 billion to over $200 billion, establishing Google as one of the most valuable technology companies in history. Under his strategic leadership and operational excellence, Google launched revolutionary products and services including Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome browser, Android operating system, YouTube platform, Google Cloud infrastructure, and Google Ads platform, fundamentally reshaping global digital communication, commerce, and information access for billions of users worldwide.

As Executive Chairman from 2011 to 2017, Dr. Schmidt continued to guide Google's strategic direction and long-term vision during its evolution into Alphabet Inc., overseeing the company's strategic expansion into artificial intelligence research and development, autonomous vehicle technology through Waymo, life sciences innovation through Verily, smart city development through Sidewalk Labs, and other transformative technology sectors that defined the future of technological advancement and innovation.

Prior to his transformative leadership at Google, Dr. Schmidt served as Chief Executive Officer of Novell from 1997 to 2001, where he led the company's strategic transformation from a traditional networking company into a comprehensive internet software and services provider, successfully navigating the company through the dot-com boom and establishing new market positions in enterprise software and network services.

Earlier in his distinguished career, Dr. Schmidt spent 14 transformative years at Sun Microsystems from 1983 to 1997, rising to Chief Technology Officer and playing a pivotal role in developing fundamental internet technologies including Java programming language, network computing architectures, distributed systems platforms, and enterprise software solutions that became foundational to modern internet infrastructure and enterprise computing.

Dr. Schmidt's angel investment philosophy is deeply rooted in identifying transformative technologies, exceptional technical founders, and breakthrough innovations that demonstrate the vision, capability, and execution excellence to build products and services that fundamentally change how people work, learn, communicate, solve complex problems, and create value in the global economy. He brings unparalleled strategic insight, operational expertise, technical depth, and a vast global network of technology leaders, entrepreneurs, academics, policymakers, and industry experts to every investment partnership and strategic collaboration.

Beyond his role as a strategic angel investor and technology leader, Dr. Schmidt has been actively involved in technology policy development, national security strategy, and governance issues at the highest levels of government and international organizations. He served as Chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, advising the U.S. government on AI strategy, competitive positioning, national security implications, and policy frameworks for emerging technologies. He continues to advise governments, international organizations, academic institutions, and policy think tanks on critical issues related to AI governance, cybersecurity policy, technology competitiveness, digital transformation strategies, and the societal implications of technological advancement.

Dr. Schmidt is deeply committed to advancing scientific research, STEM education, technological innovation, and addressing global challenges through his extensive philanthropic initiatives and strategic investments. Through Schmidt Futures, Schmidt Sciences, Schmidt Family Foundation, and other philanthropic vehicles, he supports breakthrough scientific research, emerging talent development, interdisciplinary collaboration, and initiatives focused on applying advanced technology solutions to address critical global challenges including climate change, public health, educational equity, and scientific discovery.

Educational Background & Professional Credentials

Academic Excellence & Research

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley (1982)
  • M.S. in Computer Science, Princeton University (1979)
  • B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Princeton University (1976)
  • Doctoral Dissertation: "The Design and Implementation of a Distributed Programming Language"
  • Member, National Academy of Engineering
  • Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Honorary Doctorates from leading universities worldwide including Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, and Boston University
  • Published researcher in distributed systems, programming languages, and software architecture
  • Recognized expert in technology policy, artificial intelligence governance, and national security technology strategy

Executive Leadership Experience

  • Executive Chairman, Alphabet Inc. (2015-2017)
  • Executive Chairman, Google Inc. (2011-2015)
  • Chief Executive Officer, Google Inc. (2001-2011)
  • Chief Executive Officer, Novell Inc. (1997-2001)
  • Chief Technology Officer, Sun Microsystems (1983-1997)
  • Software Engineer & Researcher, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (1979-1983)
  • Technical Advisor, Alphabet Inc. (2017-Present)
  • Guided Google through IPO, international expansion, and evolution into Alphabet
  • Led development of foundational internet technologies and enterprise software platforms

Board Positions & Strategic Advisory

  • Chairman, Schmidt Futures
  • Chairman, Schmidt Sciences
  • Board Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
  • Board Member, Mayo Clinic Platform
  • Former Chairman, National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence
  • Former Board Member, Apple Inc. (2006-2009)
  • Strategic Advisor to multiple technology companies and government organizations
  • Advisory roles with leading academic institutions and research organizations
  • Technology policy advisor to governments and international organizations
Investment Partnership Opportunities

Strategic Investment Inquiries

We continuously seek opportunities to partner with exceptional founders and technical leaders building transformative technology companies with global impact potential. Whether you are developing breakthrough artificial intelligence technologies, quantum computing applications, advanced cybersecurity solutions, or innovative enterprise software platforms, we invite you to share your vision and explore potential collaboration opportunities.

Investment Proposal Submission

Contact Information

Silicon Valley Office

555 Bryant Street, Suite 555
Palo Alto, CA 94301
United States

Email Communications

investments@schmidt.ventures
partnerships@schmidt.ventures

Investment Criteria & Focus

Investment Range

$500K - $25M initial investment
$100M+ follow-on capability

Technology Focus Areas

AI/ML, Quantum Computing
Cybersecurity, Enterprise Software

Response Timeline & Process

Initial Review Process

5-7 business days for qualified opportunities
Detailed follow-up within 2 weeks