DNA testing firm 23andMe filed for bankruptcy protection Sunday night after years of struggling to find a profitable business model. The company's stock, which peaked at over $300 in early 2021, plummeted around 50% to below $1 in trading Monday morning. The company said CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki had resigned but would remain on the board of directors, CNN reports. In a lengthy post on X, Wojcicki, who was unable to get support for previous efforts to take the company private, said she had stepped down so she would "be in the best position to pursue the company as an independent bidder."
Wojcicki said she was disappointed by the special committee of independent directors' decision to file for Chapter 11, but she remains "supportive of the company." The company, founded in 2006, went public in 2021 but has never turned a profit, despite enthusiasm around its pioneering saliva-based test kits, the BBC reports. Its market valuation, which was above $6 billion at one point, fell below $25 million on Monday. The Wall Street Journal notes that it never solved its "central business problem"—the fact that consumers only needed to take its test once.
The bankruptcy filing follows years of problems at the company, including a data breach in 2023 that affected around half of its 14 million users. In November, it cut around 40% of its workforce. The company said there would be no change to the way it protects data during the bankruptcy process, though Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler calls the situation a "privacy nightmare" in which genetic information "could end up in someone else's hands—and used in ways you had never considered." He notes that California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a consumer alert Friday, saying Californians should "consider invoking their rights and directing 23andMe to delete their data and destroy any samples of genetic material held by the company." (More 23andMe stories.)
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