Google venture capital exec Bill Maris stands down

Bill Maris, the founder of Google’s venture capital arm quit on Thursday, in the latest string of departures from the company.

Maris, who founded Google Ventures (GV) in 2009, will be replaced by GV managing partner David Krane.

With about £2.4bn of Google’s cash, GV invested in over 300 companies including taxi-hailing app Uber and e-commerce retailer Jet.com, which was recently bought by Wal-Mart.

Maris, a trained neuroscientist, had reportedly left because he wanted to return to a smaller business, but is yet to confirm his next step.

There had been recent high-profile departures from Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Chris Urmson, chief technical officer for the company's self-driving project, left on 5 August, and Anthony Levandowski, project manager for the self-driving project left earlier this year, in an exodus of engineering talent.

Silicon Valley executive, Tony Fadell, stepped down as chief executive of Alphabet's security system producer subsidiary Nest in June.