Google’s life sciences team is becoming its own Alphabet company

Google’s X lab is famous for its ambitious undertakings building self-driving cars and balloons that beam Internet to the furthest reaches of the planet. Now all of its life sciences projects are moving on to greener pastures.

In a post to Google+ last night, Alphabet president Sergey Brin announced that the life sciences team is now ready to “become a standalone Alphabet company.” Alphabet is Google’s new parent company, the resulting restructuring of which has seen the prestigious Google brand slimmed down to include the company’s main breadwinning businesses like Search, YouTube, and Chrome. Anything “far afield” of its main Internet products are being spun out into separate companies wholly owned by Alphabet.

We first learned that the life sciences team would be spun out when Google announced the restructuring, but didn’t know when or who would be leading it.

“It’s a huge undertaking, and I am delighted to announce that the life sciences team is now ready to graduate from our X lab and become a standalone Alphabet company, with Andy Conrad as CEO. While the reporting structure will be different, their goal remains the same. They’ll continue to work with other life sciences companies to move new technologies from early stage R&D to clinical testing—and, hopefully—transform the way we detect, prevent, and manage disease,” Brin said in his post.

The life sciences team at Google is well-known for creating a smart contact lens which can use a tiny sensor to monitor glucose levels for diabetic users. LED lights can emit different colors when levels reach different thresholds, allowing those users to act proactively before levels get too high.