Alphabet's Verily Founder Andy Conrad Departs for VC Firm S32

(Bloomberg) -- Andy Conrad, the founder of Alphabet Inc.’s life sciences unit Verily, has joined venture capital firm S32 as a general partner as the firm seeks to deepen its investments in the booming field of artificial intelligence.

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Conrad is best known in Silicon Valley for launching Verily, which captured the public imagination with efforts to develop glucose-detecting contact lenses and has in recent years focused more on its bottom line. He stepped down as executive chairman of Verily earlier this month but remains an adviser to Alphabet, a spokesperson for S32 said.

The venture firm, which announced Conrad’s appointment on Thursday, was founded by veteran Google executive Bill Maris. Conrad said he was drawn to S32 by the opportunity to work with Maris, a friend of more than 25 years, and to help startups as they begin packaging pioneering AI tools as products for corporate clients.

“Helping entrepreneurs transition from the theoretical components of computer science to the practical ones is a very, very interesting and challenging thing,”