Alphabet’s Verily closes its medical device division and lays off staff

Alphabet’s Verily was one of the company’s star “moonshot” businesses, with its research delving into areas ranging from connected diabetes therapies to robot surgery. Now, Verily has shuttered its medical device division and laid off staff, the company announced in a memo seen by Business Insider. The number of employees who lost their jobs was not revealed.

“We have made the difficult decision to discontinue manufacturing medical devices and will no longer be supporting them going forward,” a spokesperson told BI. The cuts are a continuation of Alphabet’s 2023 strategic shift that saw the company cut 12,000 positions across multiple divisions while putting more resources toward AI and data infrastructure.

CEO Stephen Gillett highlighted some of Verily’s achievements, “from the launch of the Dexcom G7 CGM [a diabetes management system], to the Stargazer VNRC launch [a drug targeting system] launch with 7,800 patients screened… and these contributions have advanced patient care and medial research.”

The medical devices division may not have been a profit maker for Alphabet, but it certainly provided research in a critical area. Verily will now focus on its “core mission,” Gillett said, namely “precision health, data and AI.”