Robert Rivas

Robert Rivas is the 71st Speaker of the California State Assembly, representing the 29th District encompassing the Pajaro and Salinas valleys of the Central Coast. He took the oath of office as Speaker on June 30, 2023, becoming the first Speaker in California history to have been raised in farmworker housing — a distinction that grounds his commitment to ensuring that transformative technologies and economic opportunities are accessible to all Californians, not just those with existing wealth and power. His role in shaping California’s approach to public AI infrastructure makes him a foundational figure in the CalCompute initiative.

Speaker Rivas’s connection to CalCompute flows directly from his legislative record. The original CalCompute provision was embedded in SB 1047 (2024), the landmark Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act authored by Senator Scott Wiener. That bill designated the Speaker of the Assembly as one of the appointing authorities for the CalCompute Consortium — the 14-member body charged with developing a framework for a public cloud computing cluster housed within the University of California system. Under both SB 1047 and its successor SB 53 (2025), the Speaker holds the authority to appoint three representatives of impacted workforce labor organizations to the consortium, ensuring that workers — not only technologists and academics — have a formal voice in shaping how California’s public AI infrastructure is governed and who it serves.

Before ascending to the Speakership, Rivas built a career defined by public service across multiple sectors. Born in Henderson, Nevada, and raised in Paicines in San Benito County, he earned a B.A. in Government from CSU Sacramento in 2003 and a Master’s in Public Administration from San Jose State University in 2011. He served as an EMT and paid-call firefighter for the City of Hollister, as a field director for Assemblymembers Anna Caballero and Simón Salinas, and as a senior board clerk for Monterey County before being elected to the San Benito County Board of Supervisors in 2010, where he served two terms. First elected to the State Assembly in 2018, he chaired the Assembly Agriculture Committee and served as Vice-Chair of the Latino Legislative Caucus before his colleagues elected him Speaker-designate in November 2022.

As Speaker, Rivas has championed an ambitious legislative portfolio. He secured a first-in-the-nation COVID-19 Farmworker Relief Package, created the Golden State Teacher Grant Program, won bipartisan support for the Oil Transportation Safety Act to protect California’s coastline, and convened a special legislative session in 2024 to address gasoline price volatility through a first-of-its-kind refinery reserve requirement. He has also prioritized evidence-based governance, launching an “outcomes review” program requiring the Assembly to systematically evaluate whether enacted laws are producing their intended results — an approach he has described as essential to responsible 21st-century legislating. In 2026, he authored AB 2156 alongside Senate President pro Tempore Monique Limón, a bill co-authored by all 80 Assembly members that passed the chamber 70–0, reflecting his capacity to build broad legislative consensus.

Speaker Rivas’s relevance to CalCompute extends beyond his formal appointing authority. His career-long focus on equity — access to housing, healthcare, education, and economic opportunity for farmworkers and working families — aligns directly with CalCompute’s founding premise that California cannot afford to let frontier AI infrastructure remain the exclusive province of well-capitalized private actors. As the presiding officer of the Assembly, he oversees the chamber that must appropriate funding for CalCompute to become operational, making his continued engagement essential to the initiative’s long-term viability.

Robert Rivas represents the 29th Assembly District and resides in Hollister, California, with his wife, Christen, and their daughter, Melina. He holds a B.A. in Government from California State University, Sacramento, and an M.P.A. from San Jose State University.