Google parent company bookmarks $375M for healthcare startup

Amy Baxter | | Health Exec | Policy & Regulations

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is investing $375 million into a healthcare startup called Oscar Health. The latest funding comes after Alphabet was among investors that allocated $165 million earlier this year.

Oscar Health, founded in 2012, is a small insurance company that offers individual and business plans in select areas in the country. The company’s goal is to modernize healthcare insurance using smart digital technology and build new services leveraging the data gathered, according to Wired.

Alphabet will own roughly 10 percent of Oscar, Wired reported. Salar Kamangar, former CEO of YouTube and one of Google’s earliest employees, will also join Oscar’s board. Alphabet funded Oscar through its venture capital fund Capital G and Verily, its health services spinoff.

Oscar wasn’t looking to raise additional funds, but Alphabet stepped to support the company, according to Mario Schlosser, CEO of Oscar.

“We weren’t out there trying to raise additional money,” Schlosser told Wired. “We raised a round a couple of months ago. But Alphabet has just been talking to us for the past three years, and it took them awhile to get to the point where they really said, ‘This is something we believe in and want to put more money behind.’”

Schlosser said the funding will go toward investing in the company’s differentiation, including building its own infrastructure, clinical management system and networks. They will also hire more engineers, data scientists, product designers and clinicians. Oscar is also launching new product lines, including Medicare Advantage for 2020.

Amy Baxter
Amy Baxter

Amy joined TriMed Media as a Senior Writer for HealthExec after covering home care for three years. When not writing about all things healthcare, she fulfills her lifelong dream of becoming a pirate by sailing in regattas and enjoying rum. Fun fact: she sailed 333 miles across Lake Michigan in the Chicago Yacht Club "Race to Mackinac."

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