23andMe has been a lot of things throughout its history. Founded in 2006, it’s best known as a genetic testing company that provides insights into people’s ancestry and health risks from tubes of spit they send through the mail.
It’s also a data company, having amassed a trove of DNA samples from some 10 million people who have consented to sharing their genetic information for research. And it’s a pharmaceutical company, developing its own drugs based on discoveries gleaned from its genetic datasets. “We are an unusual company,” said CEO Anne Wojcicki on an earnings call on February 7, acknowledging its different business segments.
It is also, right now, a struggling company. 23andMe is facing more than 30 lawsuits after a data breach last year exposed personal information from nearly 7 million customers’ profiles. Valued at $6 billion in 2021 when it went public, 23andMe now risks being delisted from the Nasdaq as its stock continues to trade below $1 a share.
And like many Silicon Valley startups, it’s still working out how to turn a profit. Revenue for the fiscal third quarter was down 33 percent compared with the same period last year—from $67 million to $45 million. Its net loss for the quarter was $278 million, compared to $92 million for the same period the year prior. The company blamed the revenue loss on decreased sales of genetic testing kits and lower research revenue after its five-year exclusive collaboration with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline ended in July of last year.
Wojcicki has saved 23andMe from the brink of failure before—notably after the US Food and Drug Administration ordered the company in 2013 to stop marketing its health risk assessments to customers until the business could validate them, which took several years. But a decade later, the challenges are bigger and the solutions less clear: 23andMe needs to rebuild trust after its data breach, convince customers that it is a subscriptions business, and find new investors and industry partners to support its forays into drug development.
Wojcicki, though, believes her company can do it, and sat down with WIRED to explain how she sees 23andMe’s trajectory. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
WIRED: Ancestry testing was really a booming business for a while, but you’ve said that sales of 23andMe kits dropped off in 2019. What happened?
Anne Wojcicki: That’s a good question. It definitely became a lot more competitive. So I actually think the market grew but it’s just that it became more competitive.
And right before 2019, there was the Golden State Killer case, and there was the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal. There were a number of things happening around data privacy. I think that also got people to pause.
It was also a time period where we started to then evolve away from marketing as much around ancestry and focusing more on health. That’s ultimately been more of our vision: How do we get more and more into the health space?