[ad_1]
Dr Jessica Mega, chief medical officer of Verily
In truth, Alphabet’s life sciences arm has raised $ 700 million in new capital to grow its business activities, including its Baseline clinical healthcare platform, which it has used for research on. Covid-19.
The investment comes not only from Alphabet, but from other investors outside of Google’s parent company who have previously invested in Verily, including Temasek, OntarioTeachers’ Pension Plan and Silver Lake. Verily also said he will also use the funds to “advance” several of his life science programs, including surgery, pathology and immunology.
This is the company’s third investment cycle in recent years. In 2017, Verily took $ 800 million in outside capital from Temasek of Singapore and in January 2019 raised $ 1 billion in capital in a funding round led by private equity firm Silver Lake.
The latest round of funding comes as parent company Alphabet increases its outward investment for its so-called “other bets” to position them for their future independence. The division was formed under former Alphabet CEO Larry Page, who stepped down in December 2019, and includes a number of long-term fledgling companies including Verily, the Waymo self-driving car company, and Project urban innovation Sidewalk Labs.
In early 2020, Alphabet’s new CEO Sundar Pichai suggested imposing more discipline on other bets by possibly selling stakes in some of them to outside investors.
In its latest third quarter 2020 earnings report, Alphabet reported quarterly revenue of $ 178 million versus other bets, down from $ 155 million a year ago, a tiny percentage of the figure. The company’s overall quarterly sales of $ 46.1 billion for the quarter. Meanwhile, the division’s operating losses fell to $ 1.10 billion, from $ 941 million a year ago.
In truth, Project Baseline’s mission is to “collaborate to create the next generation of healthcare tools and services,” an initiative that maps health data points used in clinical research. This research is used in collaboration with other researchers, clinicians, engineers, designers and volunteers, according to the Baseline website.
Last March, the company launched the Project Baseline website for patients with Covid-19. Then, in May, the company announced it would launch a research study into antibodies to the virus. Over the summer, he opened a clinical lab in southern San Francisco to build more lab capacity for Covid-19 testing.
In truth, it has been screened and tested by nearly two million people at 351 test sites throughout the pandemic, according to its funding announcement Thursday.
In August, the company announced that it was moving into health insurance by creating a subsidiary to apply the technology to a kind of employer-sponsored insurance called “stop-loss”. Verily’s health platforms president Vivian Lee told CNBC at the time that the company plans to help employer clients better manage their population of diabetic workers.
Now watch: Look for more and better tests
[ad_2]
Source link