Verb is an independent company created through a partnership with Alphabet’s life sciences arm Verily and Johnson & Johnson — which is different from the way Verily traditionally collaborates with health and biotech startups. However, since it emerged from stealth mode in 2016, Verb has about $500 million in investments, and Alphabet and Johnson & Johnson are the primary equity holders.
Verb’s robot, which is still in prototype form and won’t be ready for market until 2020, combines robotics and machine learning tools in an effort to democratize surgery. It has tapped experts from a number of diverse disciplines — including optics, hardware and machine learning — to accomplish its goal.
Its biggest competition is Intuitive’s da Vinci, which has a huge pricetag many hospitals can’t foot the bill for. That, and Verb’s goals extend beyond hardware: the company’s CEO Scott Huennekens told CNBC he called the startup a “platform for digital surgery, of which robots are just a part.”
“There’s almost 8 billion humans on the earth and 5 billion [of them] don’t have access to surgery,” Mr. Huennekens told CNBC. “We want to create remarkable things, and I know that there are high expectations on us.”
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