23andMe, the corporate whose mail-in self-testing kits turned synonymous with DNA testing, is submitting for chapter amid slowing gross sales 4 years after it went public. Anne Wojcicki, who co-founded 23andMe in 2006, is stepping down as CEO as the corporate tries to discover a purchaser.
In January, 23andMe stated it was exploring choices for a sale amid slowing demand for its product and the fallout of a serious knowledge breach in 2023. In 2024, the corporate agreed to a monetary settlement for the breach, which affected 6.9 million customers. The corporate had additionally introduced layoffs of about 40% of its workforce in late 2024. Lately, the corporate’s inventory dipped beneath a greenback, placing it at risk of being delisted from the NASDAQ.
In a word to clients, the corporate stated nothing is at the moment altering about the way in which it shops, manages or protects buyer knowledge and that the corporate remains to be open for enterprise and promoting DNA kits. “By means of this course of, we are going to search to discover a accomplice who shares our dedication to buyer knowledge privateness and permits our mission of serving to individuals entry, perceive and profit from the human genome to stay on,” the corporate stated in its submit.
At its peak, 23andMe turned the best-known title within the rising space of DNA self-testing, with customers paying $99 for kits that gave them insights into their genetic make-up, potential family and ancestry. However the firm’s momentum slowed down lately after its $3.5 billion public providing in 2021.
Individuals who have used 23andMe and are involved about what would possibly occur to their knowledge in a sale have choices: They will obtain their data then delete their account, in addition to ask the corporate to discard their DNA materials along with deleting the info. Doing so will hold DNA data from being utilized in future analysis, however it may possibly’t be faraway from analysis that has already been accomplished.
