Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt enters the AI data center business alongside a failed 150-year-old Texas railroad turned oil giant
Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt is entering the AI and data center competition via his new startup, and he’s placing his bets on rural West Texas and a defunct railroad-turned-oil behemoth to help create enough power to supply 7 million homes.
Schmidt’s new venture, Bolt Data & Energy, is adopting a one-stop solution model to address hyperscalers’ land, power, and water requirements for their data center campuses. Bolt has partnered with Texas Pacific Land, an obscure oil and gas firm with a lengthy history and a $20 billion market valuation, which owns 882,000 acres of West Texas land—an area larger than Rhode Island—with convenient access to natural gas and renewable energy sources. Additionally, the company operates its own water services division for the oil and gas sector, which can be repurposed to support water-intensive data centers.
“Energy is the main constraint in scaling AI. If we want to keep America competitive, we have to solve this problem. Bolt was created to address this challenge,” Schmidt stated in an emailed interview with . “We realized that combining my technical expertise with TPL’s unrivaled land, abundant water, and access to low-cost energy could create the infrastructure needed to meet the virtually infinite demand for compute.”
Having co-authored the book The Age of AI: And Our Human Future in 2021—one year before ChatGPT’s launch—Schmidt views the era of AI and advanced robotics as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” He believes data center campus developers like Bolt are essential to competing with China in the global AI race.
“Our platform begins with West Texas’ abundant natural gas but is designed to transition to renewable and clean energy, with nuclear power also included in future plans,” Schmidt explained. “By integrating land, power generation, and data centers, we can create a scalable, resilient infrastructure capable of meeting the growing global demand for compute. Our goal is to ensure AI develops responsibly, supports American competitiveness, and delivers technology that benefits humanity while minimizing climate impact.”
Schmidt, 70, served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011, then continued as executive chairman of Google and later Alphabet until 2017, and as a technical advisor until 2020. Since then, he has stayed busy: he currently leads aerospace manufacturer Relatively Space as CEO and co-founded the non-profit organization that hosts the AI+ Expo for National Competitiveness.
Schmidt is the chairman of Bolt, which he co-founded with investors Todd Meister and Allan Tessler—who is a major stakeholder in Texas Pacific Land. To date, Bolt has raised $150 million in initial capital, with TPL contributing $50 million, including a right of first refusal to supply critical water resources to the new data center projects.
“We felt like we wanted to capture more of the value chain than just a land lease or a water contract, so that’s why we actually invested in Bolt,” Texas Pacific Land CEO Ty Glover told . “When you’re looking at who you might want to partner with in a space that you’re not an expert in, then who better than a titan of that industry like Eric Schmidt.”
West Texas as an AI epicenter
To understand how Texas Pacific Land acquired such a massive landholding, it helps to look back at its over 150-year history.
The company’s legacy dates to 1871, when a federal charter was granted to build a transcontinental railroad from Texas to California. At the time, railroad companies received federal land grants in exchange for laying tracks.
The railroad failed due to various financial reasons, but it led to the formation of an entity to manage the railroad’s acreage. This land became highly valuable when the Texas oil boom took hold in the Permian Basin over a century ago.
Texas Pacific has been publicly traded for nearly 100 years, but it operated as a passive trust collecting oil and gas royalties until 2021, when an investor feud led to its conversion into a more proactive corporation.
“Coming from a failed railroad to a gorilla in the oil and gas space and now entering the AI space is exciting. It’s a new frontier for us and for West Texas,” Glover said.
As established data center regions like Virginia become saturated with facilities, frontier areas such as West Texas will grow more attractive, Glover noted, thanks to easier regulatory environments and sparser populations.
“Our hope is we’re moving dirt on projects within the next couple of years,” he said. “What’s attractive about TPL is we can really scale this. You can build multiple, multi-gig data center campuses with one owner. Just like in other industries, scale really matters here.”
Schmidt said Bolt plans to start with one anchor customer and expand from there. He name-dropped many potential anchors: Google, , , , , OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Palantir, and even the White House’s new Genesis Mission for AI.
Bolt is taking a customized approach similar to that of Texas-based AI power startup Fermi, backed by former U.S. energy secretary and Texas governor Rick Perry. Fermi launched an IPO in October before generating any revenue and quickly surged to a $16 billion market cap, though its value has since dropped to $5 billion at the end of 2025. However, Bolt is staying private and not relying on public investor interest in the AI boom.
The plan is to start with natural gas-fired power and reach 1 gigawatt capacity, Schmidt said, then build more campuses as power generation sources expand to include wind, solar, and battery storage, and eventually nuclear power over time. The goal is to reach 10 gigawatts of power—enough to electrify about 7 million homes—on Texas Pacific Land acreage.
“We’re taking a different approach from traditional data center models that lease space and buy power from the grid. By vertically integrating energy ownership with advanced data infrastructure, we can design a platform that is both efficient and resilient,” Schmidt stated.