Verily raises $1B in investment round

Verily, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, raised $1 billion in investment funding to support growth in strategic partnership investments, global business development opportunities and potential acquisitions, the company announced Thursday.

The life sciences research and engineering organization focuses on improving health outcomes through scientific and technological advances to significant problems in healthcare and biology. To date, it has raised $1.8 billion over two funding rounds, according to Crunchbase. 

The funding round was led by private equity firm Silver Lake, and included new investors Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and other global investment management firms. Financial terms of the investment round were not released, but Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat and Egon Durban, managing partner and managing director of Silver Lake, will be nominated to join Verily’s operating board.

“We are taking external funding to increase flexibility and optionality as we expand on our core strategic focus areas,” Andrew Conrad, chief executive officer of Verily, said in a prepared statement. “Adding a well-rounded group of seasoned investors, led by Silver Lake, will further prepare us to execute as healthcare continues the shift towards evidence generation and value-based reimbursement models.”

Verily’s recent announcement comes weeks after it announced a partnership with Walgreens Boots Alliance to improve the outcomes for patients with chronic conditions by deploying its technology at Walgreens’ pharmacies. Last year, the Google Brain team and Verily developed and released DeepVariant, an AI tool capable of building a person’s genome from sequencing data.

Verily did not respond to media requests as of press time.