The DNA testing company 23andMe—once one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley—declared bankruptcy on Monday. Anne Wojcicki, the cofounder and CEO who popularized consumer-focused genomic testing, has also resigned.
"We have had many successes but I equally take accountability for the challenges we have today," Wojcicki wrote in a statement shared on social media. "There is no doubt that the challenges faced by 23andMe through an evolving business model have been real, but my belief in the company and its future is unwavering."
23andMe's bankruptcy wasn't entirely a surprise given the recent board and share price turmoil at the cash-strapped firm. Still, the turn has raised concerns for the company's 15 million customers whose DNA now appears to be in limbo. (23andMe has said there will be no changes to how it stores or protects customer data.)
Wojcicki's decision to step down follows months of pressure on the cofounder, whose entire board resigned on the same day last fall. For many years, Wojcicki was seen as a leading thinker, champion of consumer health rights, and one of a few women leading an influential biotech firm. Through her connections in tech, politics, and Hollywood, she helped push 23andMe and the possibilities of genetic testing into mainstream culture. But events of the last few years have raised questions about her legacy.
Here's a timeline of events that shaped 23andMe trajectory:
2006: Linda Avey, a genetics expert, Paul Cusenza, an engineer and executive, and Anne Wojcicki, a former healthcare investments analyst, launch 23andMe. Avey had previously conceived of the idea and pitched it to investors, including Google’s cofounders. According to Avey, Sergey Brin suggested Wojcicki become a cofounder. (Brin and Wojcicki were married at the time.)
2007: 23andMe begins offering DNA tests for $1,000 per order, asking customers to send their spit to the company in a vial in exchange for information about their ancestry and some health risks. The company's test allows users to opt in to share their data with researchers and answer questions about their lifestyle, creating a potentially valuable database for future mining. New York Times journalist Amy Harmon writes an in-depth personal account of testing her DNA with 23andMe, bringing widespread awareness of the company and its potential. The company also becomes known for celebrity-attended "spit parties."
2009: Wojcicki and the board announce Linda Avey is leaving the company. (Cusenza had left in 2008.) Years later, Avey tells the podcast She Leads: “It’s not something I chose.” She also calls the ouster “devastating.”
March 12, 2015: Wojcicki launches a drug discovery business, looking to capitalize on the data it has collected from consumers. This leads the company into a costly undertaking, with Wojcicki later recounting how she was warned against doing drug research, which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, require several years, and doesn't guarantee success. Wojcicki recruits top scientific researchers and 23andMe eventually develops two cancer drug targets that will reach clinical phase trials.
November 22, 2015: The FDA sends Wojcicki a warning letter over its spit kit tests that offer customers health and disease risk information. The company takes its health results products off the market and hires experts to navigate regulatory affairs. Two years later, the FDA approves 23andMe’s consumer-focused genomic health tests, creating a first-of-its-kind FDA-approved product.
July 25, 2018: GSK signs a deal with 23andMe that gives the drug company exclusive access to 23andMe's database—including DNA data for it's then-5 million customers—for four years. "The goal of the collaboration is to gather insights and discover novel drug targets driving disease progression and develop therapies for serious unmet medical needs based on those discoveries," GSK says in a press release. This partnership will later be extended until 2025 and GSK will announce that it led to potentially viable drug targets.
June 16, 2021: 23andMe goes public via a Richard Branson and Virgin Group—backed SPAC deal. The listing briefly values the company at $6 billion, but it will be worth $3 billion by the end of the year.
November 1, 2021: 23andMe buys telehealth company Lemonaid Health for $400 million. It was always Wojcicki’s goal for 23andMe to offer retail DNA testing, run drug research, and integrate genomic testing and clinical medicine.
October 6, 2023: A major data breach exposes the DNA of 6.9 million people targeted by hackers. The company later confirms that the hackers targeted customers of Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese ancestry. The breach also leads to a class-action lawsuit that will force the company to pay a $30 million settlement in 2024.
January 31, 2024: The Wall Street Journal publishes an explosive story looking at the reasons 23andMe's was trading as a penny stock and has never turned a profit. As a public company, major flaws in its business model become obvious. Sources in the story question whether Wojcicki is paying enough attention to the company's fundamentals or if she's building a personal brand. More broadly, the biotech market is also suffering from a downturn that began in 2022.
April 18, 2024: With 23andMe financials still deteriorating, Wojcicki expresses interest in taking the company private. As the controlling shareholder, she also says she will not be open to outside bids. (She changes her stance a few times months later.) The 23andMe board forms a special committee to prepare to assess a deal.
August 2, 2024: The board responds to Wojcicki's first bid to take the company private for 40 cents per share. It does not believe the share price is appropriate and it is unhappy with the dearth of details about financing the sale. "Our expectation after months of work was that you would submit a fully-financed, fully-diligenced, actionable proposal that is in the best interests of the non-affiliated shareholders," the board writes. It also offers the opportunity to resubmit the proposal at a later date. The company extends this deadline again when Wojcicki's sister, Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, dies of lung cancer.
September 18, 2024: In a shocking turn, the entire board of 23andMe resigns on the same day, explaining in a public letter that its members felt they had few other options. Wojcicki, as the controlling shareholder, had said she would not entertain other offers and the board had not received an improved bid while the company was facing dire straits. The group—which included luminaries such as Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, and Roelof Botha, head of Sequoia Capital—wrote that while they “wholeheartedly” believed in the company’s mission to personalize health care with genetic data, they disagreed with Wojcicki’s strategic direction.
October 16, 2024: 23andMe completes a reverse stock split to avoid being delisted from NASDAQ. The share price had previously fallen below $1.
October 17, 2024: Wojcicki tells Fortune in her first public interview since the board’s resignation that she still believes she “can land this plane” and that she was as surprised as anyone about the board's resignation. She also responds to former employees' suggestions that her overly-controlling leadership style helped to sink the company. “I’ve always said ever since the very beginning, I don’t need to be in charge,” she told Fortune. “There’s no ego for me. I care about the vision and the mission.”
February 20, 2025: After closing the drug discovery business, laying off nearly half of 23andMe's staff, and adding three CFOs to her new board, Wojcicki links up with New Mountain Capital and submits a new proposal to buy 23andMe that values the company at $75 million. Nervous retail investors tell Fortune they hope the board will not accept her first offer.
March 2, 2025: Wojcicki explains in a new public filing that New Mountain Capital is “no longer interested” in partnering with her on the proposal. Wojcicki includes a new bid, this time valuing the company at $42 million. The board rejects that proposal later the same day.
March 24, 2025: 23andMe announces it's entering bankruptcy, prompting data privacy concerns. Anne Wojcicki steps down as CEO but says she will still make yet another bid to buy the company. "Consumers are rising up and asking for more control over their health and want greater knowledge about how to be healthy and why they may have health issues," she writes on X.com. "We fought for consumers to have direct access to their information and for them to have choice and transparency with respect to their personal data. As I think about the future, I will continue to tirelessly advocate for customers to have choice and transparency with respect to their personal data, regardless of platform."
