Verily CEO tells staff the sale of its insurance business is a 'strategic win' as the deal closes

Alphabet beingness sciences portion Verily has officially sold its security concern to Elevance Health, its CEO told employees past week, arsenic the institution continues to shed projects and focus connected AI.

In an April 30 memo to staff, which was seen by Business Insider, Verily CEO Stephen Gillett said Elevance's acquisition of its stop-loss security subsidiary, Granular, had officially closed.

"This acquisition represents a strategical triumph for Elevance Health, Granular, and Verily," Gillett wrote successful a enactment to staff.

"On our end, this merchantability strengthens Verily's fiscal presumption and allows america to reinvest the proceeds towards Verily's strategical priorities," helium aboriginal added.

BI archetypal reported successful February that Verily had entered an statement to merchantability Granular to security supplier Elevance Health. A Verily spokesperson referred BI to a erstwhile statement confirming the company's statement to merchantability Granular.

Companies sometimes instrumentality retired top-loss security to wage their employees' aesculapian bills and bounds their fiscal exposure, perchance protecting them from crisp increases successful spending. Granular launched successful 2020 and utilized "proprietary technology" for its services, the institution said.

With its security concern sold, Verily has shed different task arsenic it aims to further streamline itself and refocus its strategy astir AI.

Verily sits among the "other bets" owned by Alphabet but unrecorded extracurricular Google.

It started retired successful Google's moonshot lab successful 2015 and focused connected an array of projects, including wearables and surgical robots. It has been criticized for entertaining excessively galore bets and lacking a wide focus. The portion wholly pivoted to COVID-19 screening and investigating during the pandemic. Last year, Verily announced a caller AI-powered chronic attraction merchandise named Lightpath, designed to assistance patients surviving with conditions specified arsenic diabetes and obesity.

Verily is besides eyeing a aboriginal beyond Alphabet's walls. In January, the beingness sciences radical separated immoderate of its interior systems from Google's, specified arsenic definite worker payment systems. Last year, Verily issued employees caller laptops, bureau badges, and email addresses that are nary longer aliases of the Google email domain, multiple radical acquainted with the substance told BI.

Verily is besides looking to rise different circular of superior successful the adjacent fewer months, BI antecedently reported.

Have thing to share? Contact this newsman via email astatine hlangley@businessinsider.com oregon Signal astatine 628-228-1836. Use a idiosyncratic email code and a nonwork device; here's our usher to sharing accusation securely.