23andMe, Inc. announced it expects to receive $250 million in funding from Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, Altimeter Capital Management, LP, Casdin Capital, LLC, Foresite Capital Management, LLC, and other investors. The company entered into a subscription agreement to issue 25,000,000 Class A common shares at an issue price of $10 per share for gross proceeds of $250,000,000 on February 4, 2021. The transaction includes participation from Foresite Capital Management, LLC, and purchases by Anne Wojcicki of 2,500,000 shares for gross proceeds of $25,000,000 and Richard Branson of 2,500,000 shares for gross proceeds of $25,000,000. Returning investors include funds managed by Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, Altimeter Capital Management, LP, and Casdin Capital, LLC. Investors will acquire a 6% stake in the company at a post-money valuation of $3,463,000,000. The transaction is expected to close on the date of and immediately prior to the consummation of a merger transaction, which is expected to close in the second calendar quarter of 2021. 23andMe provides at-home consumer DNA testing and also conducts research and drug-discovery work. The company runs studies — including a COVID-19 study launched earlier in the year to identify genetic differences in patients with severe symptoms — and shares de-identified individual-level genetic data and survey responses with researchers. More than one million people have participated in its research, including roughly 15,000 who tested positive for COVID-19 and about 1,100 who required hospitalization. Demand for at-home DNA testing slowed in 2020, and in January the company announced planned layoffs of 100 employees, about 14% of its workforce. Financially, 23andMe closed 2020 with $82.5 million in new funding reported in an SEC filing, described as an extension of its prior $250 million Series F. The company remains focused on consumer testing, research and drug discovery. 23andMe offers personal genetic profiling to consumers and an opt-in research platform that aggregates genetic and phenotypic data. Founded in 2006 and led by CEO Anne Wojcicki, the company is based in Mountain View, California and has amassed a database of over 5 million customers. In July 2018 23andMe received a $300M equity investment from GSK. The company and GSK also announced an exclusive four-year collaboration to focus on research and development of new medicines using human genetics as the basis for discovery. The partnership will combine 23andMe’s large-scale genetic resources and data-science capabilities with GSK’s scientific, medical, and commercialization expertise. The stated goal is to gather insights, discover novel drug targets driving disease progression, and develop therapies for serious unmet medical needs. 23andMe, founded in 2006, is a direct-to-consumer genetics testing company that sells saliva kits and returns ancestry and health information. It has convinced "millions of customers" to pay for its tests and operates a crowdsourced research business where opt-in customers participate in studies linking DNA to conditions such as melanoma and schizophrenia. The company has developed an expanding therapeutics group alongside its research platform. The announcement says the new capital will be used to accelerate customer growth, continue funding its expanding therapeutics group, and invest in its crowdsourced genetic research platform. Prior to this round the company had raised $491 million to date. Competitors mentioned in the article include Ancestry.com and Color Genomics. 23andMe is a Mountain View, CA–based personal genetics company that allows people to access, understand and benefit from the human genome. It operates a consumer genetic-testing and research platform built on data from more than one million customers who have consented to participate in research. The company uses its customer data for health research and partners with external researchers by sharing de-identified datasets. Under a $1.7M grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute, 23andMe will create an African American sequencing panel to serve as a reference dataset for health research. The de-identified panel will be made available to researchers worldwide to improve understanding of diseases in minority populations. Earlier in April the company received a separate NIH grant to apply admixture mapping to improve detection of disease-causing variants among people of African, Latino and Asian ancestry.

Total raised

$1.1B

Funding rounds

10

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Feb 2021