23andMe's DNA-for-everyone bet: $6B peak, 99% collapse, Chapter 11 in 2025

23andMe, founded in 2006 by Anne Wojcicki, Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza, made genetics a consumer product: customers mailed in saliva and received ancestry, trait and health reports. The pitch was that the resulting database — millions of genomes with consent — would become a research and drug-discovery asset, and the company went public in 2021 via a SPAC merger with a market value that peaked around $6 billion.

The database never paid the bills. 23andMe failed to turn a profit, struggled to build recurring revenue, and its research and therapeutics ambitions stayed largely unrealized. Then, in late 2023, hackers accessed the data of nearly 7 million customers, including genetic predisposition and ancestry reports; in September 2024 the company agreed to a $30 million settlement over the breach, and Wojcicki said she was exploring taking the company private.

The cash ran out before a deal could close. On 2025-03-23 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to run a court-supervised sale, with the market value around $48 million — down more than 99% from its peak — and Wojcicki resigned as CEO to bid independently. The news dominated Hacker News: 519 points and 404 comments on the filing thread, and 468 points and 355 comments on the California attorney general's consumer alert two days earlier.

In the bankruptcy auction, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals first won most of the assets with a $256 million bid; Wojcicki's nonprofit TTAM Research Institute then reopened the auction and won with $305 million in June 2025, acquiring the Personal Genome Service, research services and telehealth subsidiary Lemonaid Health. The publicly traded 23andMe was gone, bought back by its founder at roughly 5% of its peak value.