23andMe Lays Off 40% of Its Workforce as Company Spirals

The familial investigating institution 23andMe announced it was laying disconnected much than 200 employees, oregon astir 40% of its full workforce, according to a property merchandise Monday. The determination is portion of a restructuring that volition spot the institution besides halt the improvement of its therapeutics part which had been moving connected assorted imaginable aesculapian treatments.

“We are taking these hard but indispensable actions arsenic we restructure 23andMe and absorption connected the semipermanent occurrence of our halfway user concern and probe partnerships,” said Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe’s CEO and co-founder, successful a press release. “I privation to convey our squad for their hard enactment and dedication to our mission. We are afloat committed to supporting the employees impacted by this transition.”

The institution says it’s looking to merchantability assets related to the therapeutics division, which included enactment connected warring crab cells and probe with monoclonal antibodies.

“We proceed to judge successful the committedness shown by our objective and preclinical signifier pipeline and volition proceed to prosecute strategical opportunities to proceed their development,” said Wojcicki. “We stay profoundly grateful to the patients, investigators and survey unit for their information successful our objective trials.”

The institution said it expects to yet prevention astir $35 cardinal per twelvemonth from the layoffs but expects to incur astir $12 cardinal successful costs related to getting escaped of astir fractional of its workforce, including severance, modulation fees, and different costs.

23andMe went nationalist in 2021 but has struggled to find a sustainable concern model, fixed the information that astir radical don’t truly person immoderate request to usage its services aft conscionable 1 try. After you person your DNA trial results, there’s precise small crushed to instrumentality to the company, adjacent if it’s offering “subscription” services that Gizmodo reported earlier this twelvemonth had shady auto-renewal policies, according to complaints filed with the FTC.

Wojcicki announced an effort to instrumentality the institution private in April, but Reuters notes that independent directors resigned successful September aft not receiving a suitable offer.

23andMe was besides deed with a hack back successful 2023 that saw the information of astir 7 cardinal users stolen, with a subset of that leaked connected the acheronian web. And present that the institution is trying to spell private, there’s increasing interest astir what could beryllium done with the idiosyncratic information collected connected users wherever it’s sold. Normally, that interest is implicit thing similar location addresses, recognition paper numbers, and societal information numbers. But erstwhile it’s your familial information, it surely feels adjacent much personal.