Google Casts Off Life Sciences Into Standalone Company

Google’s Life Sciences division, which researches disease prevention and cures, is to be made into its own company, underneath the Alphabet umbrella.

Life Sciences was formerly part of Google X, and remained so following the Alphabet announcement earlier this month.

Graduate

But co-founder Sergey Brin wrote in a blog post yesterday that the “life sciences team is now ready to graduate from our X lab and become a standalone Alphabet company”.

“Three years ago we embarked on a project to put computing inside a contact lens — an immensely challenging technical problem with an important application to health,” he said.

“While I am delighted at the progress that project has made, I could not have imagined the potential of the initiative it has grown into — a life sciences team with the mission to develop new technologies to make healthcare more proactive.”

Life Sciences has so far worked on projects that include a nanodiagnostics platform and a cardiac monitor.

Brin said that while the reporting structure will be different with Life Sciences as its own company, the goals remain the same. Andy Conrad will remain in charge.

“They’ll continue to work with other life sciences companies to move new technologies from early stage R&D to clinical testing—and, hopefully—transform the way we detect, prevent, and manage disease,” wrote Brin.

“The team is relatively new but very diverse including software engineers, oncologists, and optics experts. This is the type of company we hope will thrive as part of Alphabet and I can’t wait to see what they do next.”

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