Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former software engineer who served as the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company’s executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also served as the executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and Technical Advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020. In April 2022, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated his net worth to be US$25.1 billion.
As an intern at Bell Labs, Schmidt in 1975 was co-author of Lex,[7][8][9] a software program to generate lexical analysers for the Unix computer operating system. From 1997 to 2001, he was chief executive officer (CEO) of Novell. Schmidt has served 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 Washington Commanders of the National Football League (NFL).
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, with Eric Lander. Lander later became Joe Biden‘s science advisor. In the meantime, Schmidt had left Google, and founded philanthropic venture Schmidt Futures, in 2017. Under Schmidt’s tenure, Schmidt Futures provided the compensation for two science-office employees in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. In October 2021, Schmidt founded the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) and has since served as its chairman
What is Eric Schmidt’s net worth and salary?
Eric Schmidt is an American businessman and philanthropist who has a net worth of $24 billion. Eric Schmidt is most notable for being the former CEO of Google. Eric was brought in to take over as CEO from company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 2001. He successfully guided the company through its blockbuster initial public offering. Eric was CEO of Google through 2011. He then served as Chairman and Technical Advisor through 2020. Eric is member of a small club of individuals who became billionaires as employees of companies they did not found. Other examples include eBay’s Meg Whitman, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon and Apple’s Tim Cook.
Eric Schmidt was the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, and he remained on the board of directors until 2019. During his time at Google, he amassed a large number of shares in the company.
- In 2013, Schmidt sold 3.2 million shares of Google stock for $2.51 billion.
- In 2019, he sold an additional 1.8 million shares for $1.4 billion.
- As of March 2023, Schmidt owns an estimated 70 million shares of Google stock, either directly or indirectly.
- This represents about 1% of the company’s total outstanding shares.
- Schmidt was granted 14.3 million shares of Google stock when he joined the company in 2001.
- He also received a number of stock options over the years, which he has exercised.
- Schmidt’s stock sales have made him a very wealthy man.
- To date he has sold at least $4 billion worth of Google shares.
Early Life
Eric Schmidt was born in Washington D.C. in 1955. He spent his childhood in Blacksburg, Virginia. He attended Yorktown High School, and went on to Princeton University and graduated with a bachelors in electrical engineering. He continued his education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his MS, and then went on to earn a PhD in EECS. He was also a part time Professor at Stanford Business School.
Early Career
Prior to joining Google, Eric held positions with Bell Labs, Novell, the Palo Alto Research Center, Zilog and Sun Microsystems. At Sun he worked his way up from Director of software engineering to Vice President and GM of Sun Microsystems’s software products division. While at Novell he served as the chairman of the board and the CEO.
Eric was interviewed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at a pivotal Pre-IPO time during Google’s origination. He became Google’s chairman, and CEO in 2001. He served as CEO until 2011. Upon stepping down as CEO, Eric was given a $100 million equity award.
When he was initially hired by Google, Eric was given a base salary of $250,000 plus 14,331,703 Class B shares of the company’s common stock at $0.30 per share. He was also given 426,892 shares of Series C preferred stock at $2.34 per share.
He served as Executive Chairman until December 2017 when he announced he was stepping down completely after 17 years with the company. Technically Eric remained a Technical Advisor through 2020.
Apple Board
Eric infamously sat on the Board of Directors of Apple Inc from 2006 to 2009. During this time, Apple was in the midst of developing what eventually became the iPhone and iOS operating system. Eric was aware of the plans but would recuse himself from Apple meetings that discussed the company’s mobile ambitions so as to not give a competitor too much inside information. It was later reported that Eric and Steve Jobs had a handshake agreement that Google would not ever pursue a mobile operating system or phone. However, around this same time, Google began to undertake talks to acquire Android which would pave the way for their own mobile phone and operating system. When Steve Jobs learned of Google’s plans he was livid and threw Eric off Apple’s board.
