23andMe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 24, 2025, and co-founder and chief executive Anne Wojcicki resigned as the company continued its effort to cut costs and find a buyer. The AP report says the company plans to sell substantially all of its assets through a court-approved reorganization plan.
Wojcicki is not leaving the company entirely. According to the report, she will remain on the board and still intends to bid for 23andMe as an independent buyer. Her resignation, however, marks a major turning point for a business that once promised to make personal genetics more accessible and profitable but has struggled for years to turn that promise into a stable model.
The company has been under pressure for a long time. Since going public in 2021, it has struggled to find a profitable business model. The AP report says the latest filing follows months of turmoil, including a November layoff of 40% of the workforce and the decision to shut down the therapeutics division. It also says that the board's independent directors resigned last September after acquisition negotiations involving Wojcicki.
The financial picture is weak enough to explain the move. The filing reported more than $214.7 million in debt at the end of last year, against assets of more than $277.4 million. Shares had already lost almost all of their value by the time the company sought protection, and they traded below $1 after the filing. The company also said it had received $35 million in debtor-in-possession financing from JMB Capital Partners to help it continue operating.
Privacy concerns make the sale more sensitive than a normal restructuring. 23andMe holds genetic data from millions of customers, and the report points to the 2023 breach that exposed ancestral information for nearly 7 million users. The company says the bankruptcy will not change the way it stores or protects data, but the legal and reputational risk is obvious because any future buyer will inherit the trust problem along with the assets.
That is why California Attorney General Rob Bonta warned customers days before the filing to think about deleting and destroying any genetic data held by the company. The AP report says Bonta's office pointed to the company's financial distress and the large trove of sensitive consumer data it had accumulated. In that context, the sale process is not only a rescue plan for a company; it is also a test of how regulators and buyers handle personal DNA information when a consumer-data business collapses.
The company says it will continue operating during the bankruptcy process, and board chair Mark Jensen called the court-supervised route the best path forward. But the larger story is that a high-profile consumer genetics business built around long-term trust, brand appeal and data value has now reached the point where survival depends on a sale.
The bankruptcy also turns 23andMe's data holdings into a central part of the sale story. Buyers are not just purchasing intellectual property or a consumer brand; they are taking on a company that holds extremely sensitive genetic information and has already had to answer for a major breach. That makes the court process unusually important. Any new owner will have to reassure regulators and customers that the data will remain protected even as the business itself changes hands.
