23andMe Files for Bankruptcy, Loses CEO: What That Means for You and Your Data

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 mentioned it was exploring choices for a sale amid slowing demand for its product and the fallout of a serious information 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 in peril of being delisted from the NASDAQ. 

In a observe to prospects, the corporate mentioned nothing is at present altering about the best way it shops, manages or protects buyer information and that the corporate remains to be open for enterprise and promoting DNA kits. “By this course of, we’ll search to discover a accomplice who shares our dedication to buyer information privateness and permits our mission of serving to individuals entry, perceive and profit from the human genome to reside on,” the corporate mentioned in its put up.

At its peak, 23andMe turned the best-known identify 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 members and ancestry. However the firm’s momentum slowed down in recent times after its $3.5 billion public providing in 2021.

Individuals who have used 23andMe and are involved about what may occur to their information in a sale have choices: They will obtain their info then delete their account, in addition to ask the corporate to discard their DNA materials along with deleting the information. Doing so will hold DNA info from being utilized in future analysis, however it will probably’t be faraway from analysis that has already been performed.