Alphabet’s life sciences and healthcare subsidiary Verily has raised $700 million in an investment round funded by its existing investors, including Alphabet, Silver Lake, Temasek, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and others.

WHAT IT DOES

Verily serves as Alphabet’s research arm that develops tools and devices to collect, organize and activate health data. It also creates interventions to prevent and manage disease.

The company often partners with other health-focused organizations to bring these innovations to life at scale.

Past partnerships include a digitally driven diabetes-management tool called Onduo, developed with Sanofi. It also teamed up with digital health startup iRhythm on an initiative focused on creating screening, diagnosis and management tools for patients with atrial fibrillation.

WHAT IT’S FOR

The investments will be used to expand some of Verily’s leading commercial businesses, the company said in its announcement.

Specifically, the funds will go towards Project Baseline, its end-to-end clinical research ecosystem, and other Verily health platforms.

The company will also progress several of its life sciences programs across surgery, pathology and immunology.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

Verily is known for raising massive amounts of money in its funding rounds. Last year, it brought in $1 billion, and two years before that, it scored $800 million in funding from Temasek, a Singapore-based investment company that acquired a minority stake of the company as part of the deal.

Notable happenings for the company from this year include launching its new venture, Coefficient Insurance Company. It is targeted at self-funded employers and is pitched as stop-loss insurance. It will combine Verily’s hardware, software and data science with Swiss Re Corporate’s distribution model.

It also released a series of COVID-19 resources through Project Baseline.

One is a COVID-19 screening and testing resource that was initially launched in California but has since scaled to a national level. The program made headlines when it was reported that California's San Francisco and Alameda counties had cut ties with the program.

It launched a Baseline COVID-19 research project to drive research contributions for developing treatments, antibody testing and vaccines.

Additionally, Verily released its back-to-work solution, called Healthy at Work, which incorporates local, onsite and mail testing services into a centralized digital-analytics dashboard.

ON THE RECORD

"We’re humbled and excited about the opportunity to expand the scope and rapidly scale our products and services. With this new round of funding from our largest investors, they are strengthening their commitment to help expedite our original vision,” said Andrew Conrad, CEO and founder of Verily, in a statement.

“2021 will be a year of significant and focused growth for Verily’s operations as we continue to drive innovation in our core programs, launching more studies and study tools on Baseline to support decentralized research, and expanding our Health Platforms product offerings and services for employers, providers and patients.”