Verily takes $1B from Alphabet, announces new CEO

The company says it will use the funding to expand its businesses focused on precision health

While digital health funding, and VC investing in general, may be slowing down, the big tech companies certainly aren't showing any signs of pulling back when it comes to their healthcare aims. Amazon just spent $3.9 billion to buy One Medical, and now Alphabet is infusing its life sciences division with a healthy amount of cash.

On Friday, Verily announced that it took $1 billion dollar in an investment from its parent company, which it says it will use to support the expansion of its businesses that are focused on precision health. The company last raised a $700 million round, also in a round led by Alphabet, in December 2020.

Verily started out as Google Life Sciences, and was formerly a division of Google X, best known for the company's "moonshot" projects, such as a smart contact lens for measuring the glucose levels people's tears to help with diabetes; it became its own company in 2015.

Other Verily projects include Liftware, a spoon for people with tremors; Project Baseline, which is launched in 2017 with the goal of expediting evidence generation through clinical trial innovation; development of miniaturized continuous glucose monitors in partnership with Dexcom; and smart shoes for health tracking and fall detection.

Earlier this year, the company partnered with L’Oréal to better understand and characterize skin and hair aging mechanisms.

Verily says the new capital will be used to support the company’s core initiatives focused on real world evidence generation, healthcare data platforms, research and care, and the underlying technology that drives this work.

Leadership shakeup

Along with the funding, Verily also announced a shakeup among its executives, revealing that company founder Andy Conrad will become Executive Chairman of the Verily Board and current president Stephen Gillett will be promoted to Chief Executive Officer. Both of these changes will be effective January 2023.

At the same time, the company's CFO, Deepak Ahuja, announced he is leaving the company at the end of the month, but will remain an advisor to Verily.

Last week, Verily appointed Alix Hart as its new Chief Marketing Officer. 

(Image source: verily.com)