Alphabet has been preparing for two years to sell its life sciences unit, Verily, a company executive told a court Thursday (Oct. 2).
Testifying as a defense witness in the Justice Department’s antitrust case against another Alphabet business unit, Google, which involves the company’s advertising technology, Heather Adkins, Google’s vice president of security engineering, said Verily has been working to move from Google’s own infrastructure to Google Cloud, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
“We are in the process of helping them become an independent company,” Adkins said, speaking of Verily, according to the report.
This is the first time a Google executive has said the company aims to spin off Verily, the report said.
A Verily spokesperson told Bloomberg, per the report: “At the end of 2024, we finalized a long planned separation to our own technical and operational infrastructure from Google, so that we can continue to grow as an independent company within Alphabet,” and added that they do not comment on nonpublic information.
Alphabet led a $1 billion investment round for Verily in September 2022. Verily said at the time that the capital would be used “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.”
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Verily also said at the time that it would consider future investments in strategic partnerships, global business development and acquisitions.
It was reported in August that Verily laid off staff and wound down its medical devices program as part of a shift of its focus to artificial intelligence (AI) and data infrastructure.
The move mirrored Alphabet’s efforts to cut costs in some areas and boost its investment in AI, TechCrunch said in that report.
In June, Verily said in a press release that it extended its partnership with Vanderbilt University Medical Center to provide researchers with cloud-based access to analyze biomedical data through the National Institutes of Health All of Us Research Program’s Researcher Workbench program.
The company said its curation and enrichment capabilities support a research ecosystem made up of proprietary and third-party datasets that can be accessed and analyzed.