Alphabet’s Verily raises $1 billion from its parent company to revolutionize healthcare and medicine

Verily, Alphabet’ big bet to revolutionize healthcare and medicine, has raised $1 billion in a funding round to support the expansion of its businesses focused on precision health. The round was led by its parent, the company announced Friday.

Formerly called Google Life Sciences, Verily is a life science tech startup that develops tools and devices to collect, organize and activate health data. Alongside the funding round, Verily also announced new roles for the company’s top leadership. Verily said its president, Stephen Gillett, will be promoted to the chief executive officer, while founder Andy Conrad will become executive chairman.

The company will also use the funding proceeds to support a variety of 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, with the goal of making health care better and more tailored to individuals.

Going forward, the company said it would also consider further investment in strategic partnerships, global business development, and potential acquisitions.

We covered Verily two months after the pandemic started when the company launched an antibody research project to study how the human immune system responds to the coronavirus. At the time, Verily said it adapted its existing study, Project Baseline, an initiative to make it easy and engaging for people like you to contribute to the map of human health and participate in clinical research.

The company also collaborated with researchers, clinicians, engineers, designers, advocates, and volunteers to build the next generation of healthcare tools and services. The research work was only available to US residents who are 18 years or older.

Spun out of Google Life Sciences in 2015, Verily’s mission is to bring the promise of precision health to everyone, every day. Verily is focused on generating and activating data from a wide variety of sources, including clinical, social, behavioral and the real world, to arrive at the best solutions for a person based on a comprehensive view of the evidence.

Separately, Verily also announced that its CFO, Deepak Ahuja, has decided to leave the company for another opportunity. He will remain an advisor to Verily but depart his current role at the end of September. Verily said it will begin a search for his replacement immediately.