Summary:The venture capital arm of the Internet giant just published a slew of big numbers intended to impress the tech community through its annual report released this week.

Google Ventures invested more than $1.6 billion over the course of 2014, fueling 282 companies with surely welcomed cash.

The venture capital arm of the Internet giant published a slew of big numbers intended to impress the tech community through its annual report released this week.

Looking closer, Google dedicated nearly a quarter (24 percent) of its money this year on the enterprise sector with a notable emphasis on data.

The portfolio welcomed a few new players into the fold, including big data wunderkind Cloudera, big data exploration platform MapD, and – wait for it – data analytics infrastructure firm Kensho. (Not to mention Datafox, DataPad and Datanyze, among others.)

Online payroll startup ZenPayoll was said to have saved “thousands of small businesses” up to $1.5 billion in annual payroll through its services this year.

Additionally, approximately eight million people were have said to signed up and connected through cloud-based video conferencing service UberConference.

But a larger bulk of the funds (36 percent) went to the life sciences and health – a vertical known to be a favorite at the Mountain View, Calif.-based company with the recent launches of the anti-aging project Calico along with other data-driven services.

Software maker Flatiron Health, for example, was touted to support treatment for about one in five active cancer patients in the United States. One Medical, a growing chain of tech-savvy medical collectives in metropolitan areas, was boasted to have saved its paid members five million minutes (or 80,000 hours) in 2014 by starting appointments on time.

The divergence towards life sciences and health is massive and even abrupt when compared to 2012 figures.

Two years ago, the VC firm plunked only six percent of its wealth in life sciences at the time – compared to 32 percent on mobile and another 31 percent on the “consumer Internet.”

Image via Google Ventures
Author: Rachel King
Source: ZDNet