An improbable comeback by Anne Wojcicki is the latest twist in one of Silicon Valley’s greatest rise and fall sagas. The cofounder of 23andMe confirmed this week she has (re)acquired the bankrupt genetic data company she cofounded and ran, ultimately, into the ground. After winning a bidding fight, she is paying $305m to retain control of a business integral to her personal brand.
23andMe, which famously launched at celebrity “spit parties” where guests provided their saliva for DNA testing, will now operate under Wojcicki’s new nonprofit organisation, the TTAM Research Institute. “The opportunity to give back to society with our research and help everyone benefit from learning about their genome with a healthier life, is a personal mission”, she posted on X.
Wojcicki’s determination to return to the helm of 23andMe required overcoming legal challenges and outbidding Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which in May had struck what it thought was a solid agreement to acquire the firm for $256m, only for bankruptcy officials to reopen the process after Wojcicki called it “unfair”.
Yet there are many doubters still to convince as she leads the business into its next phase. What began as a modern fairytale of a nerdy romance between entrepreneurs turned sour professionally and personally, leaving damaged relationships in its wake. Is this latest nonprofit takeover an idealistic act for society, or an exercise in personal reputation management?
When 23andMe launched in 2007, Wojcicki became the face of a big idea: that the remarkable recent breakthroughs in mapping the human genome could be democratised for the masses, starting a revolution in medicine and health. Soon after the spit parties during elite gatherings such as Davos and New York Fashion Week, stories started appearing about people rediscovering unknown relatives through shared DNA, creating a buzz around the brand (though not every discovery of an unsuspected parent or child was welcomed, least of all by surprised “fathers”). Turning genetic testing into a fashionable social phenomenon epitomised the techno optimism of the day: data, even the most intimate sort, could do no wrong.
Her saga could become a parable of how Silicon Valley might reassure the world that it can be trusted with our precious personal data
Wojcicki married Google co-founder, and seed investor in 23andMe, Sergey Brin in May 2007. At the same time Google invested $3.6m in the company. In 2008, Time declared the firm’s genetic testing home kit “invention of the year”. Wojcicki was living the billionaire life – kitesurfing off Necker Island with Sir Richard Branson, hanging out with the Obamas, flying everywhere on the Google jet. And as part of a notable local family, her mother, a leading educator, and sister Susan, a top executive at Google (who died in 2024), she was Silicon Valley royalty. In 2023, Mattel included the three Wojcicki sisters in a special edition set of Barbie dolls to mark International Women’s Day.
Yet by 2013, when Wojcicki separated from Brin, divorcing in 2015, things had already started going awry in her business life. There had been acrimonious partings with her cofounders; one, Linda Avey, has posted that she left when “my co-founder Anne convinced the board that she should run the company”. And while the firm’s valuation continued to rise, ultimately to $6bn after it was taken public via a special acquisitions company (SPAC) in 2021, from quite early on, questions were being asked about what, exactly, was 23andMe’s business model. Customers might be willing to pay a good price for an initial test, but after that, how do you keep them paying?
In 2013, America’s Food and Drug Administration investigated 23andMe, issuing a warning letter and ordered the firm to stop marketing its genetic tests – a potentially terminal blow that was avoided thanks to effective high-level lobbying. By 2017, the FDA started to approve 23andMe’s tests for genetic susceptibility to specific diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, though again questions were asked about the value of these, given there were limited treatment options for anyone diagnosed.
After going public, 23andMe’s share price plummeted as investors lost faith in the company’s ability to monetise its genetic database. A data breach in October 2023 did not help, affecting customers around the world, including over 155,000 in the UK. Last month, after a joint investigation with the Canadian government, Britain’s information regulator fined 23andMe £2.31m. John Edwards, the information commissioner, said that “23andMe failed to take basic steps to protect this information. Their security systems were inadequate, the warning signs were there, and the company was slow to respond.” In the US, 23andMe reportedly reached a $30m settlement of a class action lawsuit related to this data breach.
In September 2024, the firm’s entire board, except Wojcicki, resigned in unison, a dramatic vote of no confidence in her leadership and her plan to go private. On 24 March 2025, 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Wojcicki resigned as CEO.
The bankruptcy filing sent shockwaves through the genetic testing industry and raised questions about the fate of millions of people’s genetic data. Approximately 15% of its customers, some 1.9 million people, requested their data be deleted from the company servers. One of Wojcicki’s priorities, now she is back in charge, should be to reassure remaining customers they no longer should fear the privacy nightmare scenario of their intimate biological information being sold to the highest bidder or falling into the wrong hands.
In Silicon Valley, being a nonprofit does not necessarily mean abandoning money-making for a simpler, poorer life. The nonprofit Open AI has an artificial intelligence business now valued at $300bn. It remains to be seen what business dreams Wojcicki still nurtures.
For now, her best strategy may be to emphasise the virtuous aspects of nonprofit status, adopting a more polished management style, keeping the data secure and proving it can be used to do good for the world. Pull that off and her saga could become a parable of how Silicon Valley as a whole might reassure the world it can be trusted with our precious personal data. Certainly, to date, the travails of 23andMe have engendered considerable scepticism about the once inspiring, and still well-funded, vision of democratising DNA analysis.
Photograph by Andrew Harnik/Getty