Business Wire
Verily Life Sciences plans to reorient its strategy around AI in 2025, just as it marks its 10th anniversary as a company under Alphabet.
The unit, which uses technology and data to improve healthcare, is looking to mature. As of January, it will have separated from many of Google's internal systems in an attempt to stand independently. Simultaneously, it's refocusing its strategy around AI, according to two employees with knowledge of the matter, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss confidential information.
This new strategy would primarily involve other healthcare companies using Verily's tech infrastructure to develop AI models and apps, resulting from a multi-year effort across teams. It ultimately aims to become companies' one-stop-shop for tech needs like training AI for drug discovery and building apps for health coaching.
The unit is also looking to raise another round of capital in the next year, the two people familiar with the matter said. The company's last investment was a $1 billion round led by Alphabet in 2022. Alphabet will likely lead the round again, although leadership could also bid for outside capital as Verily tries to become "increasingly independent," one source said.
The question for next year is whether Verily can finally start turning long-gestating ideas into profits. One of the people said Verily still generates the most revenue selling stop-loss insurance to employers, which is a far cry from the higher-margin business it's aiming for. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that this business, called Granular Insurance, was Verily's most lucrative.
Verily has been criticized in the past for having a rudderless strategy. It's entertained bets on topics as diverse as editing mosquito populations and helping pharmaceutical companies run clinical trials.
In an email to Business Insider, a spokesperson for Verily declined to comment on non-public information. He confirmed the company's plans to provide tech infrastructure for third parties, designed to provide "precision health capabilities across research and care."
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Verily's idea to become a tech provider for other healthcare companies grew out of its own internal needs a few years ago when it decided to "re-platform" its various bets on a shared infrastructure, a source familiar with the matter said.
The multi-year effort is now coming to fruition, and Verily plans to sell the core technology it uses to health plans, providers, digital health startups, and life sciences companies.
The platform will include data storage and AI training. Companies could also use Verily's tech tools to spin up apps without having to code as much. For example, a digital health startup could use Verily's tools to build a coaching app with AI insights on weight loss.
"Large pharma companies, for example, look at the work we do and recognize that the data science applications or clinical research tools that they need to build themselves could be better if they were built using our platform," said Verily CEO Stephen Gillett in an interview with Fortune in November.
In that interview, Gillett said Verily's tech tools would include sophisticated AI capabilities for healthcare, data aggregation, privacy, and consent. One source said the company plans to start rolling them out in 2025.
Carbon Health
Even as the leading AI models learn from the entirety of the internet, healthcare data remains largely private. Subsequently, Verily is betting that there's a growing need to further specialize the models for patient care and research. The upstart already does this work through its partnership with clients like the National Institutes of Health. Through a business line called Workbench, Verily hosts massive datasets for the NIH, complete with analysis tools.
Verily hasn't dropped its ambitions to grow its own healthcare business. In 2026, it plans to relaunch a diabetes and hypertension-focused app, Lightpath, broadly for health plans and employers — this time with AI coaches supplementing human ones. Verily also intends to expand Lightpath to more health conditions.
Verily spun out of Google's moonshot group in 2015 and remained part of Alphabet's collection of long-term businesses, sometimes called "other bets." Under its then-CEO Andy Conrad, the unit explored a menagerie of ideas from surgical robots to wearables. Several of these projects — glucose-monitoring contact lenses, for instance — haven't panned out.
Shortly after Gillett replaced Conrad as CEO in 2023, he announced the company would lay off 15% of its workforce and "advance fewer initiatives with greater resources."
Since then, Verily has pruned projects and teams to save costs and sharpen its focus. Dr. Amy Abernethy, Verily's former chief medical officer who joined the company in 2021, focused on aiding clinical research before departing late last year.
Verily's shift to AI, meanwhile, seems to have coincided with the hiring of Myoung Cha and Bharat Rajagopal as the chief product and revenue officers, respectively, earlier this year.
Executing the AI strategy isn't the only challenge Verily's leadership faces in 2025.
Since 2021, the life science unit has been reducing its dependency on Google's internal systems and technology through an internal program known as Flywheel. BI previously reported that it set a December 16, 2024, deadline to cut many of these ties.
The separation involves Verily employees losing many of their cushy Google benefits, which has been a point of consternation for the group, the two people said.
Gillett remarked in a town hall meeting earlier this year that some employees may feel Verily is no longer the place for them after the separation, according to a person who heard the remarks.
