Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: The Road to Superintelligence

Relativity Space CEO & former Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) CEO Eric Schmidt has spent 55 years working on technology. At 71, he’s running a rocket company and says you should take more risk as you get older, not less.

On Inside Blackstone, he sits down with host Christine Anderson on the AI data centre build-out, what he thinks about Silicon Valley’s timeline for superintelligence, what it means to be an AI-native CEO, and explains why deep reasoning should be the #1 thing that young people study today.

Is the AI boom actually a capital story in disguise?

The headlines tell you what happened. Inside Blackstone helps you see what may be coming next.

Time stamps (full transcript available here)

• 00:00 — Welcome to Inside Blackstone
• 01:08 — The Monday Morning Meeting
• 03:07 — Economic Weather Report
• 05:21 — Eric Schmidt Comes Inside Blackstone
• 06:23 — Why He Keeps Reinventing Himself at 71
• 08:12 — The Case for AI Optimism
• 09:02 — What Solving Navier-Stokes Actually Means
• 10:05 — Why This Technology Wave is Bigger, Not Different
• 13:07 — Why AI Needs Guardrails
• 16:42 — The Arrival of Long Reasoning
• 18:10 — The Beginning of Superintelligence
• 20:05 — Can AI Make a Truly Original Discovery?
• 20:57 — Financing the AI Build-Out and the Energy Problem
• 21:35 — The One Area He'd Invest In
• 22:37 — Is the AI Productivity Boom Already Here?
• 24:46 — Picks, Shovels, and Data Centers
• 26:03 — How to Be an AI-Native CEO
• 28:18 — Why Should Students Study Deep Reasoning?
• 29:49 — The Debrief

Key takeaways

• Capital is the real constraint on AI. Schmidt says energy, land, and chips can all be bought, so capital is the one thing that could slow AI demand.
• Infrastructure is where the money is. Software used to be high margin and capital-light, but now an AI company's revenue is set by its data centers. Schmidt argues it's the gold rush again, where the money went to the picks and shovels.
• Long reasoning is the year's biggest shift. Models can now stay focused for hours across thousands of steps, turning 24-hour agents into a practical business school. You have to sleep, Schmidt notes, and it doesn't.