Dr. Jessica Mega, Verily’s chief medical officer
Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences arm has raised $ 700 million in fresh capital to expand its commercial operations, including its clinical healthcare platform Baseline, which it has used for Covid-19 research.
The investment comes not only from Alphabet, but from other investors outside of Google’s parent company who had already invested in Verily, including Temasek, OntarioTeachers’ Pension Plan, and Silver Lake. Verily, it also said it will also use the funds to “advance” several of its life science programs, including surgery, pathology and immunology.
It is the company’s third round of investment in recent years. In 2017, Verily raised $ 800 million in external capital from Temasek in Singapore, and in January 2019, it raised $ 1 billion in capital in a round of funding led by private equity firm Silver Lake.
The latest round of funding comes as parent company Alphabet ramps up external investment for its so-called “Other Bets” to position them for future independence. Founded under former Alphabet CEO Larry Page, who stepped down in December 2019, the division includes a number of emerging long-term companies, including Verily, self-driving car company Waymo and urban innovation project Sidewalk Labs.
In early 2020, Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s new CEO, hinted at imposing more discipline on the other bets by potentially selling shares in some of them to outside investors.
In its most recent Q3 2020 earnings report, Alphabet reported Other Bets’ quarterly revenue of $ 178 million, compared to $ 155 million a year ago – that’s a miniscule percentage of the company’s total quarterly revenue of $ 46.1 billion in the quarter. . Meanwhile, the division’s operating losses increased to $ 1.10 billion, up from $ 941 million a year ago.
Verily, Project Baseline’s mission is to “work together to build the next generation of healthcare tools and services,” an initiative that maps health data points used in clinical research. That research is being used in collaboration with other researchers, clinicians, engineers, designers and volunteers, Baseline’s website said.
Last March, the company launched the Project Baseline website for Covid-19 patients. Then, in May, the company said it would start an antibody search for the virus. Over the summer, it opened a clinical lab in South San Francisco to create more lab capacity for Covid-19 testing.
Indeed, according to Thursday’s funding announcement, it screened and tested nearly two million people at 351 test sites during the pandemic.
In August, the company announced that it would purchase health insurance by creating a subsidiary to apply technology to a type of employer-sponsored insurance policy known as “stop-loss.” Vivian Lee, president of Verily’s Health Platforms, told CNBC at the time that the company plans to help employer clients better manage their population of employees with diabetes.
Watch now: Looking for more and better testing