Google parent company Alphabet has a new baby, but it s still awaiting a name.
Google co-founder and Alphabet President Sergey Brin announced Thursday that a life sciences team working on glucose-monitoring contact lenses, bioinformatics, cardiac monitors and a nano-diagnostics platform is graduating from secretive research incubator Google X and becoming its own Alphabet subsidiary alongside Google and other spinoffs, such as smart thermostat maker Nest and age longevity company Calico.
The company sees long-term revenue potential in its life sciences division, according to Ruth Porat, the chief financial officer of Alphabet and Google, speaking during an earnings call several weeks ago.
Andy Conrad, who was already running X s life science division, now becomes CEO of the as-yet-unnamed company, so far just called Life Sciences. Before joining Google, he was chief scientific officer of Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp), and also co-founded the National Genetics Institute and the California Health and Longevity Institute.
Says Brin, in his first Google + post since sharing his skydiving experience more than a year ago:
3 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. 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. The efforts it has spawned include a nanodiagnostics platform, a cardiac and activity monitor, and the Baseline Study.
It s a huge undertaking, and I am delighted to announce that the life sciences team is now ready to graduate from our X lab and become a standalone Alphabet company, with Andy Conrad as CEO. While the reporting structure will be different, their goal remains the same. 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.
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.
Above: A smart contact lens to monitor glucose levels for diabetes was developed by researchers at Google. (Photo courtesy of Google)
