As part of a broader reorganization and strategy shift, Alphabet healthcare and life science subsidiary Verily Life Sciences issued an email to employees stating that it was laying off more than 200 people, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The cuts represent around 15% of Verily Life Sciences’ more than 1,600 employees.
“We are making changes that refine our strategy, prioritize our product portfolio and simplify our operating model,” Verily Life Sciences’ new CEO Stephen Gillet wrote in the email, which was shared on a blog post. “We will advance fewer initiatives with greater resources. In doing so, Verily will move from multiple lines of business to one centralized product organization with increasingly connected healthcare solutions.”
Additionally, the CEO also noted that Verily will be focusing its strategic efforts on “becoming the data and evidence backbone for precision health,” which will include AI and data science applications.
“Our most immediate priority is ensuring that these Veeps [Verily employees] are given the support they need to ease their transitions, and we will offer help in many ways over the coming weeks and months ranging from severance to coaching and outplacement services,” Gillett wrote. “I am truly grateful for their contributions.”
Gillett said that Verily employees will be learning more in a companywide update scheduled for January 18th.
“Our path forward is driven by the need to make deliberate choices about where we can have the greatest impact in precision health and to put ourselves on a faster path to sustained commercial success,” Gillett wrote. “We’ve made some hard but necessary choices to focus our resources where we can make a meaningful difference and that will help us build a business that impacts the healthcare ecosystem with interconnected products as we grow.”
