A Builder for California
Physicist. Entrepreneur. Oakland Step Pop. Not a career politician.
Background
The Roots of a Builder
Matthew Chase Levy is not a career politician. He is a physicist, entrepreneur, and Oakland Step Pop whose connection to California is personal, professional, and permanent. This is where he built his career, where he is raising his family, and where he believes the future should be built, not exported.
Matthew's calling to public service came from an unusual place: the realization that some of the most important decisions shaping people's daily lives are made far upstream, long before policy reaches the public. Whether it was national security, energy, or technology, he saw the same pattern repeated over and over again. Bold ideas were plentiful. Delivery was not.
That gap between ambition and execution is what defines his worldview. People do not live on theories. They live with the results.
Curious early. Builder always.
"People do not live on theories. They live with the results."
Experience
A Foundation in Science and Security
Matthew's early career placed him at the intersection of science and survival. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he worked on issues related to U.S. strategic security, learning firsthand that safety, stability, and prosperity depend on systems that work under real-world constraints. This experience shaped his belief that leadership is proven not by intention, but by performance.
His path took him to the University of Oxford, where he became the first American physicist appointed a Newton International Fellow. While there, Matthew focused on emerging fields that were often dismissed as premature: artificial intelligence and fusion energy. Rather than debating abstract potential, he focused on what it would take to make these tools useful to people.
He served in leadership roles within Oxford's governing institutions and worked at the interface of science and policy, helping shape how frontier research could responsibly translate into public benefit. Throughout this period, one lesson became clear: complex systems succeed only when teams are built well and incentives align with delivery.
Performance under real-world constraints.
Frontier research, translated responsibly.
Framework
Matthew's "California for a Reason" Framework: From AI for Science to AI for Humanity
Matthew knows teams work well when people feel taken care of and at their best to deliver. According to his framework, teams feel stronger when they have the latest tools like AI working for them, not replacing them. Matthew carried these lessons into entrepreneurship. He founded Noble.AI to build AI-for-Science tools designed to accelerate discovery and industrial efficiency. The goal was never automation for its own sake, but augmentation, helping scientists, engineers, and workers solve problems faster and safer. Trust, Matthew learned, comes from shipping real technology that works.
Priority
Energy is the input for everything
Energy became the natural extension of this framework. Even when it was unpopular, Matthew has always argued that energy is the input for everything. When energy is expensive or unreliable, families feel it everywhere: in rent, groceries, transportation, and opportunity. When energy becomes abundant and clean, life gets cheaper and more stable.
In 2022, he launched AE Blue to help accelerate the commercialization of fusion energy, working to ensure that breakthroughs do not remain trapped in labs, but translate into factories, jobs, and lower costs for everyday people. This work reinforced a central conviction: what works matters more than what sounds good.
The Moment
Why It Is Time
Matthew is running for Governor because the future he has been building toward has arrived faster than expected, and California is at risk of missing it. AI-for-science is no longer speculative. Fusion energy is no longer theoretical. The next industrial wave is real and unfolding now.
Yet California has grown slower at the very moment speed matters most. While the state continues to invent, other places are capturing the manufacturing, supply chains, and high-paying jobs. Families in California feel the consequences of rising costs and declining trust.
Matthew believes this is not inevitable. It is the result of systems that have lost the ability to execute.
The Plan
A Builder's Agenda for California
Matthew brings a builder's mindset to leadership. He listens to the quietest voice in the room to surface truth. He builds teams that can handle complexity. He demands that projects be delivered on time, on budget, and with accountability. He is not running to govern through division or ideology. He is running to unify the people of California and restore confidence that California can still do hard things – and open doors for hard-working people.
Clean energy that lowers bills
Housing and treatment that reduce homelessness
Technology that creates opportunity
Infrastructure that actually gets built
Matthew Chase Levy has spent his life building teams for moments like this. Now, he is asking the people for a chance to build a California that works.