Alphabet (GOOGL) is losing yet another key executive from its speculative "Other Bets" division.
The founder and chief executive of GV, Alphabet's venture capital arm, Bill Maris, announced on Thursday he would be stepping down. Managing partner David Krane will replace Maris.
Maris has been a key figure at GV since its launch in 2009. GV, which started as Google Ventures, invests in five main industries: consumer, life science & health, data & artificial intelligence, enterprise and robotics.
To date, the investment arm has invested in over 300 companies. Included in its current portfolio are Medium, Urban Engines, Slack, Carbon 3D, HubSpot (HUBS) and Editas Medicine (EDIT) , among others.
Over the years, GV has emerged as a prominent player in Silicon Valley as its investments handsomely paid off. For instance, it was also behind online retailer Jet.com, which Walmart Stores (WMT) agreed to pay $3 billion for on Monday, and has invested in Uber and Nest.
In addition to building up GV during his tenure, the former VC head has also reportedly been involved with Alphabet's life sciences operation Calico.
Meanwhile, Maris's exit follows the departures of several executives at Alphabet.
In June, Tony Fadell stepped down as CEO of home automation company Nest to transition into an advisory role. Earlier this month, Chris Urmson left his role as the head of the Self Driving Cars Project at Google. The Self Driving Cars division had also lost its product manager Anthony Levandowski, who left the company to launch a startup.
Still, the departure of Maris appears to be unrelated to the others leaving. The financier told Recode Wednesday that he was leaving GV because "everything is great."
GV's new CEO Krane has an impressive track record of investments including Uber, Nest and Blue Bottle Coffee. Krane started his career over a decade ago at Alphabet in public relations. Tech behemoths have routinely started and operated VC divisions in the past. Chipmaker Intel (INTC) , for example, formed its VC arm in 1991.
Operationally speaking, the exit of Maris is unlikely to have a material impact on the company, said Needham & Co. analyst Kerry Rice.
"Google is somewhat of a machine. I'm not sure that there's one person anymore that's going to be so impactful that [the departure] is going to change the trajectory of the business," he said. "The scale is bigger than any one individual."
He further explained that Google has continued to do well -- arguably even better -- even as high-level executives have parted ways, citing Sheryl Sandberg's departure to Facebook (FB) in 2008 as an example.
While other tech behemoths such as Apple (AAPL) are more affected by executive departures given that their business revolves around product designs, Google is largely a software company and management changes are more likely to go unnoticed by consumers, Rice noted.
Meanwhile, it's almost been a year since Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin restructured their tech behemoth by establishing Alphabet. Today, Alphabet serves as the parent company of Google and other subsidiaries including GV, Verily, Calico and Google Fiber.
Google adopted a rather radical corporate structure to accelerate its investments in Other Bets, or areas it characterizes as "very speculative or even strange" outside its core businesses like Search, Gmail and YouTube.
By:Jaewon Kang (The Street).
Photo: The Guardian.
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