Topic: Life sciences
Alphabet’s Verily Preps for China Entry With Temasek Funds – Bloomberg (Jan 26, 2017)
Verily is one of the most fascinating Other Bets – in some ways, it’s the most completely removed from much of the rest of what Alphabet/Google does, both in terms of its focus and in terms of the business model, which has largely involved partnering with big pharmaceutical firms so far. (We devoted a big chunk of an episode of the Beyond Devices Podcast to Verily a while back, so if you’re interested it’s probably worth a listen – I also wrote a brief summary of my findings here.) Getting outside investment is an interesting way to reduce Alphabet’s exposure to the risks associated with what are rightly called “Bets”, while also potentially allowing these businesses to move faster than they could with Alphabet cash alone, and move into new markets – Temasek is Singaporean, but invests heavily in China. I’m curious to see whether we’ll see this model applied to additional Other Bets, or whether it’s another unique facet of the Verily business which we won’t see repeated elsewhere.
via Bloomberg