23andMe's Fatal Flaw | Guess Who’s Back | 3
Business Wars
Wondery
4.6 • 13.2K Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2025
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Just when it looked like 23andMe was selling to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, founder Anne Wojcicki placed a bid through her new nonprofit in an attempt to win it back at the eleventh hour. Lila MacLellan, Senior Writer at Fortune, joins David to discuss Wojcicki’s leadership style, and what the new version of 23andMe might look like under her control. Later, Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi of NPR’s Planet Money shares what happens to people’s sensitive health data when the company holding that information files for bankruptcy — and how consumers can protect themselves.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wonderly Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Business Wars, 23 and Me's fatal flaw, early and ad-free right now. |
| 0:07.8 | Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:16.1 | I'm David Brown, and this is Business Wars. 23 and me had hype, investment, and a vision. |
| 0:47.3 | But its business fundamentals were built on shaky ground. |
| 0:51.3 | Founder Anne Wuchitsky created a model where customers purchased a kit just once, |
| 0:56.6 | and by the time she started branching out trying to create a revenue stream based on new |
| 1:01.6 | pharmaceuticals, it was too little too late. Still, Wuchitsky fought for the survival of 23 and |
| 1:08.5 | me until the bitter end. After a major data breach in |
| 1:12.1 | 2023 and a mass board resignation in 2024, it looked like it was game over for 23 and me. |
| 1:18.9 | The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2025 and quickly began looking for buyers, |
| 1:24.7 | with Wuchitsky resigning from the company to put herself in the running. |
| 1:29.4 | In May, 23 and Me made a deal with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to sell for $256 million. |
| 1:37.1 | And then, in early June, Wuchitsky reopened the bidding war by offering to pay $305 million through her recently founded nonprofit. |
| 1:47.9 | Lila McClellan is a senior writer at Fortune where she's profiled Wuchitsky in her efforts to |
| 1:52.4 | buy back the company she founded. Lila joins us to peel back some of the layers of Wuchitsky's |
| 1:58.0 | leadership, how she made it to the top, and what factors |
| 2:01.2 | led to the company's ultimate fall? Later on, we'll hear from Alexei Horowitz-Gazi, co-host of NPR's |
| 2:07.4 | Planet Money, who joins us to answer the multimillion dollar question, the one everyone who ever |
| 2:12.9 | purchased a 23-and-Me kit wants to know the answer to. What happens to your data now that the parent |
| 2:18.9 | company has been sold? Alexi's Aunt Vovi was a 23 and me customer, so he decided to investigate |
| 2:26.1 | with a team from Planet Money. Stick around, because all that's coming up. |
| 2:34.1 | AI might be the most important innovation ever. |
... |
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