Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Ancient Google CEO Eric Schmidt is entering the AI and data center race with his new startup, and he’s betting on rural West Texas and a bankrupt railroad-turned-oil giant to help him produce enough electricity to light 7 million homes.
Schmidt’s new Bolt Data & Energy takes a one-stop-shop approach to meeting hyperscalers’ land, power and water needs for their data center campuses. Bolt has partnered with Texas Pacific Land, a little-known oil and gas player with a long history and a $20 billion market cap that offers 882,000 acres of land in West Texas – more land area than Rhode Island – with easy access to natural gas and renewable energy resources. Oh, and it turns out the company has its own oil and gas water services business, which can also translate into help for thirsty data centers.
“Energy is the biggest constraint to AI development. If we want to keep America competitive, we need to solve this problem. Bolt was created to address this challenge,” Schmidt said in an email interview with Fortune. “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 endless demand for computing.”
Having literally co-written the book on AI…The age of AI: and our human future, in 2021, a year before the launch of ChatGPT, Schmidt considers the era of AI and advanced robotics to be the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. He believes data center campus developers like Bolt are needed to compete with China in the global AI race.
“Our platform starts with West Texas’ abundant natural gas, but is designed to transition to renewable, clean energy, with nuclear power also included in future plans,” Schmidt said. “By integrating land, power generation and data centers, we can create a scalable and resilient infrastructure capable of meeting the growing global demand for computing. Our goal is to ensure that AI grows responsibly, supports American competitiveness and delivers technology that benefits humanity while minimizing climate impact.”
Schmidt, 70, was CEO of Google for a decade, from 2001 to 2011, then continued as executive chairman of Google and then Alphabet until 2017 and as a technical advisor until 2020. However, he has remained very busy since. He is also now CEO of aerospace manufacturer Relatively Space and co-founder of the nonprofit organization that organizes the AI+ Expo for National Competitiveness.
Schmidt is chairman of Bolt and co-founded it with investors Todd Meister and Allan Tessler, who is a major investor in Texas Pacific Land. To date, Bolt has raised $150 million in seed capital, with TPL contributing to a $50 million investment, including the right of first refusal to provide critical water resources to new data center projects.
“We felt like we wanted to capture more of the value chain than just a land lease or water contract, which is why we invested in Bolt,” said Ty Glover, CEO of Texas Pacific Land. Fortune. “When you’re looking at who you might want to partner with in an area that you’re not an expert in, then who better than a titan of this industry like Eric Schmidt.”
Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket—Getty Images
West Texas, epicenter of AI
To understand how Texas Pacific Land acquired such a vast acreage, it helps to look back at its more than 150-year history.
The legacy dates back to 1871, when a federal charter was granted to build a national railroad from Texas to California. At the time, railroad companies received federal land grants in exchange for laying track.
The railroad went bankrupt for various financial reasons, but this resulted in the creation of the Texas Pacific Land Trust to manage the railway area. This acreage became very valuable when the Texas oil boom took hold in the Permian Basin more than a century ago.
Texas Pacific has been publicly traded for nearly 100 years, but it existed as a sleepy trust collecting oil and gas royalties until 2021, when an investor feud resulted in the trust transforming into a much more proactive company.
“Going from a bankrupt 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 older data center regions like Virginia become saturated with facilities, border regions such as West Texas will become more attractive, Glover said, with easier regulatory environments and sparser populations.
“We hope that we will move forward with the projects over the next two years,” he said. “The cool thing about TPL is that we can really scale this. You can build multiple, multi-gigabit data center campuses with a single owner. Just like in other industries, scalability really matters here.”
Schmidt said Bolt plans to start with one anchor client and expand from there. He cited many potential anchor points: Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OracleOpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Palantir and even the White House’s new Genesis mission for AI.
Bolt takes a tailored approach similar to that of Texas startup Fermi, backed by former U.S. Energy Secretary and Texas Governor Rick Perry. Fermi launched an IPO in October before it even began seeing revenue and quickly reached a market capitalization of $16 billion, although its value has since plunged to $5 billion by the end of 2025. However, Bolt remains private and is not banking on public investor interest in the AI boom.
The plan is to start with natural gas-fired power and build to 1 gigawatt capacity, Schmidt said, then build more campuses as power generation sources expand to include wind, solar and battery power and, eventually, nuclear power over time. The goal is to reach 10 gigawatts of electricity, enough to electrify about 7 million homes, across the Texas Pacific Land.
“We are taking a different approach from traditional data center models that rent space and purchase 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 said.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
