Larry Paige, Google’s co-founder, held a press conference today to announce that his company is forming a new healthcare and wellness company. The company, which is being called Calico, will focus mainly on aging and diseases associated with getting older. Google has teamed up with Apple's Art Levinson on this venture.
The company is geared towards tackling issues like decreased mobility and mental agility. They hope that Calico will be the example of how to improve lives far beyond social networking and photo sharing. Calico will focus strongly on the challenges of aging. Arthur D.Levinson will be Chief Executive Officer and a founding investor.
During his press conference, Page said, “Illness and aging affect all our families. With some longer term, moonshot thinking around health care and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives. It’s impossible to imagine anyone better than Art—one of the leading scientists, entrepreneurs and CEOs of our generation—to take this new venture forward.”
“I’ve devoted much of my life to science and technology, with the goal of improving human health. Larry’s focus on outsized improvements has inspired me, and I’m tremendously excited about what’s next,” Levinson added.
Levinson will remain Chairman of Genentech and a director of Hoffmann-La Roche, as well as Chairman of Apple.
Franz Humer, chairman of Hoffmann-La Roche, added, “Art’s track record at Genentech has been exemplary, and we see an interesting potential for our companies to work together going forward. We’re delighted he’ll stay on our board.”
“For too many of our friends and family, life has been cut short or the quality of their life is too often lacking,” said Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple. “Art is one of the crazy ones who thinks it doesn’t have to be this way. There is no one better suited to lead this mission and I am excited to see the results.”
Edited by
Alisen Downey
