Khosla Ventures leads the charge for Naveen Jain’s Viome wellness … – GeekWire

Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, discusses successes and failures during a Stanford University business forum in 2015. (Stanford Business Photo / Stacy H. Geiken)

Khosla Ventures, the prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm whose interests range from biofuels to spaceflight, was revealed today as the lead investor in Viome, the wellness monitoring startup co-founded by Seattle-area entrepreneur Naveen Jain.

Khoslas role was among the additional details that Viome provided today as it formally announced its $15 million Series A funding round. The investment firstcame to light last week in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but Khoslas role wasnt previously disclosed.

Bold Capital Partners, the venture fund associated with Singularity University as well as tech entrepreneur and XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis, is also among Viomes backers.

The Series A round brings Viomes total funding to $21 million, the company said.

Viome said one seat on its board would go to Khosla Ventures founder, managing partner Vinod Khosla. The 62-year-old, Indian-born billionaire is a legend in Silicon Valleys entrepreneurial and philanthropic circles.

Viome is a transformational healthcare company with a team that comprises decades of experience across AI, health and science, and a singular mission of keeping people healthy, Khosla said in a news release. By investing in Viome, were investing in a future where preventable illnesses are a thing of the past.

That sentiment echoes Jains view: With Viome, were allowing people to reclaim control of their health so that chronic illness can become a choice rather than just a matter of bad luck, Jain, the companys CEO, said in the release.

The key to Viomes monitoring service is a series of diagnostic tests that analyze subscribers blood, urine, saliva and stool samples to assess their metabolism as well as the genetic makeup of the microbial communities inside their guts.

Researchers are finding increasing evidence that the balance of a persons gut microbes, known collectively as the microbiome, is linked a wide range of health factors. Viomes AI-based platform, developed in partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, analyzes the data from the diagnostic tests and offers personalized recommendations on diet and lifestyle.

The monitoring service doesnt yet offer medical advice, however. For that, Viome would have to get the go-ahead from the federal Food and Drug Administration.

Current price for the service is $59 a month, or $599 a year, which covers two rounds of testing in the course of a year.

Several thousand customers are using the service under the terms of Viomes early beta program, the company said, and additional customers in the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, India and the Middle East can sign up to join the program when availability is widened next month.

Viome said it has 45 employees in Los Alamos, New York and Cupertino, Calif.

Like Khosla, Jain has been involved in a wide variety of startups, including BlueDot,Moon Express,InfoSpace,InteliusandTalentWise.The $6 million in initial funding for Viome came from BlueDot, which Jain co-founded as an innovation factory to jump-start technological moonshots.

Jains career has not been without controversy: Infospace was hit hard when the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, leading to a years-long flurry of lawsuits that entangled Jain, other executives and shareholders. Millions of dollars changed hands in a series of legal settlements to resolve the disputes.

Khoslas newly reported involvement should raise Viomes profile in whats becoming a crowded field of ventures that monitor the microbiome and personal wellness. Potential rivals include Seattle-based Arivaleas well as uBiome,HabitandDayTwo.

Jains fellow founder at BlueDot, Deepak Savadatti, serves as Viomes president. The companys other executives include chief science officer Momo Vuyisich, a veteran researcher from Los Alamos; chief medical officer Helen Messier, who previously worked at Human Longevity Inc.; and chief technology officer Guruduth Banavar, who helped create Watson AI technologies at IBM.

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Khosla Ventures leads the charge for Naveen Jain's Viome wellness ... - GeekWire