Intel chairman on his new health technology company is going public through a SPAC

Well, yeah, I'm very thankful that Medtronic is in fact an investor, and there are other long-term investors in it too. But the key to this pack that we're looking at is that the stack here is a means to an end, and the end here is to impact healthcare. It's a long-term thought process. That's why a company like Medtronic is interested in this, to explore areas where Medtronic is peripheral to and perhaps gain some benefit from. And the company that we identify can also perhaps go into a partnership with Medtronic potentially at some point, but also other healthcare. And the despac process is actually the start of our journey, not our end. We want to make a difference in healthcare, to see how computational technology can directly impact healthcare and have the same benefits at the same rate in healthcare that computational technology has in the consumer world. So it is a long-term effort that we're after here, and we found the SPAC to be a very useful vehicle for that.

Look, the model has to be proven out. I mean, so far we're just starting this. But the way you lay it out is actually a potential benefit, and one that could easily be translated into other such models with other companies and other industries potentially. But the help that we will get from them in many ways is, you know, they have a very big M&A department, which obviously I'm familiar with, but they have a very big M&A department, and they have access and knowledge to many companies out there. And we intend to get some help from there. So that's a pretty big effort. And then the other is, you know, whatever we do, it'll be complementary to Medtronic. And because of that, it may we can get some assistance from, and I'm looking forward to that and the partnership.

Well, you know, the way it came together was this. Look, I retired from Medtronic in April of last year, and I was looking at what I wanted to do. And I had a deep interest in computational technology. I've got a background in engineering, and I've always maintained an interest there. And I've also, obviously, am interested in healthcare, and I've noted, like I pointed out before, the potential opening there in the sense of the growth in computational technology. So that was an area I wanted to really work on. And one of the last acquisitions that we did at Medtronic was the acquisition of Digital Surgery, which was an AI company in the surgical space. And through that, I met Jean, who was one of the founders of Digital Surgery. And he's an entrepreneur as well, he's a surgeon. And Jean introduced me to Josh, and Josh had helped Digital Surgery grow by introducing SoftBank to Digital Surgery. And then I soon learned that Josh was a highly accomplished investor himself. He had connections with the venture capital world, with long-term investors, which I had peripherally, but Josh was really connected to that. And so it is a long-term investment where I can take a scaled opportunity and attack it quickly and benefit and make it benefit quickly.