Carl Berg was born and raised in a Jewish family in New Mexico. He has one brother, Clyde Berg, also a real estate developer. He worked as a loan officer in Texas and then moved to California in the 1970s where took a job running a mortgage company in Sunnyvale, California. In California, he partnered with real estate agent, John A. Sobrato, and pooling their owned capital, founded Midtown Realty. In 1979, they re-focused their Business on building industrial campuses for the tech industry.
Berg acquired Mission West Properties Real Estate Investment Trust in 1997 and sold it to realty developer Divco West in December 2012 for $1.3 billion.
Berg is one of the founders of Berg Health, a biopharma company using AI approaches. His Technology Investments include the consulting firm International Network Services, which he bought from Lucent Technologies in 2002. He is a major investor in Verifyme, Inc. He is also a major investor and board member of Valence Technologies and Summit Semiconductor, and is on the board of Directors of LynuxWorks.