Alphabet’s health tech subsidiary Verily used the health data of more than 25,000 patients without authorization and actively covered up those violations, a former company executive alleges.
The executive, Ryan Sloan, claims Verily fired him after he discovered breaches of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, and reported his concerns to the company’s senior management.
Patient data in the U.S. is protected under HIPAA, which ensures the sensitive information cannot be disclosed without a patient’s consent.
Sloan’s allegations are detailed in a pending lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco. The suit, which was filed late last year, has not been previously reported.
On Monday, the judge overseeing Sloan’s case denied a request by Verily to dismiss his civil complaint, or to send the dispute to arbitration.
“Verily believes the allegations and contentions alleged in this employment matter that was commenced in 2023 are completely without merit. Verily will defend itself to the full extent of the law,” a company spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. “Verily is an equal opportunity employer, and takes its responsibility and commitment to abide by all laws and regulations seriously. As this is an ongoing legal matter, Verily will not be providing further comment at this time.”
Representatives for Sloan did not comment.
Verily started as a moonshot in 2015 within Alphabet’s innovation lab X, formerly known as Google X. It’s Google’s sister company and operates under Alphabet’s “Other Bets” category.
The company hired Sloan in 2020 to serve as the chief commercial officer of its diabetes and hypertension business, Verily Onduo.
In January 2022, Sloan alleged that he and Julia Feldman, Onduo’s general counsel, discovered Verily had improperly used patients’ protected health information in its research, marketing campaigns, press releases and national conferences. The “extensive violations” affected more than 25,000 patients in Onduo’s diabetes program, according to an amended complaint filed in June.
Sloan and Feldman informed senior Verily leaders of their findings, the filing said, and they repeatedly raised the issue. An internal investigation at Verily confirmed several HIPAA breaches took place, according to the filing.
“Between January and March of 2022, internal investigators at Verily confirmed multiple breaches of fourteen (14) separate HIPAA Business Associate Agreements with large, covered entity clients of Onduo between 2017 and 2021,” the filing said.
Patients who accessed Verily Onduo through these clients – which include Walgreens Boots Alliance, Highmark Health, Quest Diagnostics and Delta Air Lines, among others – may have been affected by the breaches.
Delta said in a statement that it doesn’t have a comment on the suit, “but our employee’s personal information is important to us.”
“We are looking into this and will make sure any impact to our people is appropriately addressed,” the company said.
Quest said in a statement that, “We are not familiar with the allegations and have no further comment.”
Highmark declined to comment. Walgreens did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Under HIPAA, companies like Verily are supposed to notify impacted parties no later than 60 days after discovering a breach. Verily “decided to delay the decision of notifying the covered entities,” according to the filing, and the company engaged in negotiations to renew many of those contracts “without revealing that a HIPAA breach had recently occurred.”
“During a contract negotiation between Verily and Highmark Health in August of 2022, Verily represented that it was in compliance with HIPAA at all times, while knowingly concealing that a HIPAA breach had occurred,” the filing said.
That same month, Verily terminated Feldman and another employee who was aware of the breaches.
When Sloan reiterated his concerns about the breaches to Lisa Greenbaum, Verily’s then chief revenue officer, in October 2022, she allegedly defended the company’s decision not to disclose them and said that doing so would negatively affect public relations, the filing said.
Greenbaum joined Doximity, another health-care technology company, as chief commercial officer in January 2024, according to her LinkedIn.
Doximity did not immediately respond to request for comment.
In November 2022, Verily allegedly suppressed a press release out of concern that it would draw attention to previous marketing studies that violated its HIPAA Business Associate Agreements. The company removed the press release from its website and instructed employees not to mention it again, according to the filing.
Sloan was officially terminated from Verily in January of 2023, while on protected leave to care for his “critically ill mother,” the filing said.
The lawsuit marks the latest in a series of stumbles at Verily, which, despite raising more than $1 billion from investors, has struggled to latch onto a winning product. Verily is reportedly transitioning from a Limited Liability Company, or an LLC, to an investor-friendly C-corp structure to prepare for a fresh round of funding, according to a report from Business Insider on Wednesday.
Verily originally developed hardware like continuous glucose monitors before pivoting to pandemic response when Covid-19 broke out in 2020, then switched directions again to focus on precision health in 2022.
The company introduced a new artificial intelligence-powered chronic care solution called Verily Lightpath last year, and announced it was selling its stop-loss insurance subsidiary, Granular Insurance Company, in February.
–CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Dan Mangan contributed to this report
Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss (L-R), creators of crypto exchange Gemini Trust Co., on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, a cryptocurrency conference held at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood in Miami, Florida, on June 4, 2021.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
Gemini Space Station, the crypto company founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, priced its initial public offering at $28 per share late Thursday, according to Bloomberg.
A person familiar with the offering told the news service that the company priced the offering above its expected range of $24 to $26, which would value the company at $3.3 billion.
Since Gemini capped the value of the offering at $425 million, 15.2 million shares were sold, according to the report. That was a measure of high demand for the crypto company, which had initially marketed 16.67 million shares. Earlier this week, it increased its proposed price range from between $17 and $19 apiece.
A Gemini spokesperson could not confirm the report.
The company and the selling stockholders granted its underwriters — led by and Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley — a 30-day option to sell an additional 452,807 and 380,526 shares, respectively, per the registration form. Gemini stock will trade on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol “GEMI.”
Up to 30% of the shares offered will be reserved for retail investors through Robinhood, SoFi, Hong Kong-based Futu Securities, Singapore’s Moomoo Financial, Webull and other platforms.
Gemini, which primarily operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded by the Winklevoss brothers in 2014 and holds more than $21 billion of assets on its platform as of the end of July.
Initial trading will give the market a sense of how long it can keep the crypto IPO party going. Circle Internet and Bullish had successful listings, but there has been a recent consolidation in the prices of blue chip cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether. Also, in contrast to those companies’ profitability, Gemini has reported widening losses, especially in 2025. Per its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini posted a net loss of $159 million in 2024, and in the first half of this year, it lost $283 million.
This week, however, Gemini received a big vote of institutional confidence when Nasdaq said it’s making a strategic investment of $50 million in the crypto company. Nasdaq is seeking to offer its clients access to Gemini’s custodial services, and gain a distribution partner for its trade management system known as Calypso.
Gemini also offers a crypto-backed credit card, and last month, launched another card in partnership with Ripple. The latter garnered more than 30,000 credit card sign-ups in August, a new monthly high that was more than twice the number of credit card sign-ups in the prior month, according to the S-1 filing.
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Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella (L), speaks with OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman, who joined by video during the Microsoft Build 2025, conference in Seattle, Washington on May 19, 2025.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
OpenAI on Thursday said its nonprofit parent will continue to have oversight over the company and will own an equity stake of more than $100 billion.
The artificial intelligence startup, recently valued at $500 billion, said this structure will make the nonprofit “one of the most well-resourced philanthropic organizations in the world,” and will allow the company to continue to raise capital.
OpenAI also announced it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Microsoft, which outlines the next phase of their partnership. Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI, backing the company as early as 2019, three years before the launch of of the chatbot ChatGPT.
“We are actively working to finalize contractual terms in a definitive agreement,” OpenAI said in a joint statement with Microsoft, which is also the company’s key cloud partner. “Together, we remain focused on delivering the best AI tools for everyone, grounded in our shared commitment to safety.”
In May, OpenAI bowed to pressure from civic leaders and ex-employees, announcing that its nonprofit would retain control even as the company was restructuring into a public benefit corporation. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit research lab in 2015, but has in recent years become one of the fastest-growing commercial entities on the planet.
OpenAI said Thursday it is working closely with the California and Delaware Attorneys General to establish its structure.
“OpenAI started as a nonprofit, remains one today, and will continue to be one – with the nonprofit holding the authority that guides our future,” the company’s Chairman Bret Taylor said in a statement Thursday.
The startup has been engulfed in a heated legal battle with Elon Musk, one of its co-founders. Musk has been trying to keep OpenAI from converting into a for-profit company as he competes in the generative AI market with his own startup, xAI.
OpenAI said its nonprofit is also opening applications for the first phase of a $50 million grant initiative that is aimed to support other nonprofit and community organizations across AI literacy, economic opportunity and community innovation.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella departs following a meeting of the White House Task Force on AI Education in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Sept. 4, 2025.
Eric Lee | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told employees in a meeting on Thursday that the company has work to do to smooth relations with employees after announcing several rounds of layoffs and a mandated partial return toin-person work.
In the meeting that was held online, an employee asked executives to speak about a perceived lack of empathy in the company’s culture as of late and steps Microsoft is taking to rebuild trust with its workforce.
“I deeply appreciate that, the question and the sentiment behind it,” Nadella said, in audio that was obtained by CNBC. “I take it as feedback for me and everyone in the leadership team, because at the end of the day, I think we can do better, and we will do better.”
Nadella’s comments come after Microsoft slashed 9,000 jobs in July, following smaller reductions in the months prior. On Tuesday, Microsoft said workers living near its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, must come into the office three days a week, starting in February, with a broader rollout to follow.
Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s human resources chief, said at Thursday’s meeting that reception to the return-to-office announcement has been mixed, with some workers feeling like they’re losing autonomy. But she said that employees in and around Seattle already come in, on average, 2.4 times each week.
Like most of the tech industry, Microsoft went fully remote during the pandemic, and made particular use of its internal Teams video and chat offerings, which gained rapid adoption during that period. Microsoft has been slower than many of its peers to put a mandate in place for coming back to the office. Amazon, one of Microsoft’s top rivals, called employees back to offices five days a week in January.
While Nadella and the executive team are taking criticism from some staffers, Wall Street is applauding the company’s growth and execution. The stock is up almost 20% this year, outperforming the broader market, pushing Microsoft’s market cap to $3.7 trillion, which trails only Nvidia among the world’s most-valuable companies.
In July, Microsoft reported a 24% increase in net income to $27 billion. The company’s gross margin was under 69%, compared with 71% in late 2023. It’s rapidly building and renting data center infrastructure to meet artificial intelligence demand.
Nadella said at the meeting that with remote work, new employees and those who are early in their careers don’t always feel a sense of apprenticeship or mentorship.
“Management is just mostly all remote, but the interns are all, you know, in one location,” he said. “And so those are things that just will break a social contract.”
Microsoft didn’t immediately provide a comment.
Even with Microsoft’s rapid expansion, Nadella said the company is feeling the pressure. It’s a common theme in the software industry, as concerns proliferate about the impact of AI and its potential to automate work.
“We have some very, very hard work ahead of us, and that hard process of renewal is essentially what we have to do,” Nadella said. “You have to be hardcore in terms of an intellectual honesty about what really needs to happen.”
Microsoft’s Azure cloud business grew 39% in the latest quarter, but revenue in the Windows and devices business increased by just 2.5%.
“Some of the biggest businesses we built may not be as relevant going forward,” Nadella said. “Some of the margin that we love today may not be there tomorrow, and that means you have to be way ahead of all of those going away, right?”
Microsoft, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in April, will retain its core values as it confronts market realities, Nadella said.
“Capital markets have one simple truth,” he said. “There is no permission for any company to exist forever.”
That wasn’t the only contentious topic at the meeting.
Employees are awaiting details from a third-party investigation after The Guardian said in August that Israel’s military used Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure to store Palestinians’ phone calls as part of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Microsoft has fired five employees following protests at its headquarters in Redmond, according to a statement from the group No Azure for Apartheid.
Microsoft President Brad Smith, whose office the protesters entered, addressed the issue on Thursday. He said that he and Coleman met with Jewish Microsoft employees, who have been harassed and threatened and have seen their public information shared online.
“We don’t get to control what happens outside Microsoft, but we need to be clear about one thing,” Smith said. “There is no room for antisemitism at Microsoft, and as a company and as a community, we will protect this group and defend them from that.”