Today, it was announced that Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is the winner of the bankruptcy auction for 23andMe, having submitted a $256 million bid. 23andMe went public with a value of 3.5 billion in 2021, reaching 6 billion shortly thereafter. Regeneron’s bid is a highly discounted 4.27% of its highest value.
The second highest bid of $156 million was placed by a nonprofit research institute founded by 23andMe’s founder and former CEO, Anne Wojcicki, representing 2.6% of the company’s highest value.
The purchase will include all of the 23andMe assets, including customer data, except for 23andMe’s Lemonaid “on demand” health division, which will be discontinued. 23andMe will be operated as a wholly owned subsidiary of Regeneron.
Regeneron has offered employment to all 23andMe employees and has committed to comply with the existing 23andMe Privacy Policies, protect customer privacy, and safeguard their genetic data.
Currently, an ombudsman appointed by the bankruptcy court is evaluating the impact, if any, on 23andMe customer privacy, and will report back to the court by June 10th.
A date of June 17th has been set for a Sale Hearing for the court to finalize approval of the sale, with the actual transaction to occur sometime in the third quarter of 2025.
23andMe has secured a loan to continue operations to bridge the gap between now and the closing of the sale transaction.
What Does This Mean to Genetic Genealogy?
Aside from the statements about privacy, we don’t know how this will affect the 23andMe genealogy products and features.
Regeneron’s announcement includes this statement:
23andMe will be operated as a wholly owned direct or indirect subsidiary of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and continue operations as a personal genomics service. Regeneron’s purchase does not include 23andMe’s Lemonaid Health business. Additional details about the company’s operating plans will be shared at time of closing.
Regeneron’s focus is clearly on genetics-driven pharmaceuticals.
While that certainly aligns well with 23andMe’s mission, the future of genetic genealogy under that umbrella is uncertain.
Essentially, 23andMe used genetic genealogy to entice people into paying to test, and hopefully to opt-in for research. For some reason, their partnerships with pharmaceutical companies had expired and were apparently not renewed, causing the company to lay off workers twice in 2023.
Regeneron, according to their website, uses the DNA of consented volunteers, and provides a list of projects and collaborations, here.
In January 2023, Regeneron announced that they had access to more than 2 million sequences, followed by a collaboration in January 2025 with Truveta that provided access to another 10 million de-identified sequences.
If 23andMe started out with 15 million testers before the combined effects of the breach and bankruptcy, and let’s say that an estimated 2 million of those people deleted their accounts, based on how many matches disappeared, that leaves 23andMe with 13 million customers. 23andMe has said in the past that 80% of their customers opt-in for research, so that’s about 10.5 million consented people available to Regeneron for research purposes. The fact that 23andMe customers are not de-identified and may have answered innumerable questions probably makes the 23andMe database even more valuable to them.
Plus, 23andMe customers pay to test, unlike the volunteers that Regeneron uses today.
It’s unclear how many of the existing 23andMe customers tested for the purpose of genealogy, or for the purpose of health, or how many people would have tested anyway if 23andMe didn’t have a genealogy aspect.
Unfortunately, since the data breach in 2023, many of the features and tools important to genealogists were removed and never returned. Furthermore, 23andMe was already deficient due to the lack of trees and a cap on the number of your matches. It was evident that genealogy wasn’t a high priority for them – but until the breach, they seemed to be willing to provide some genealogy services to genealogists. That leads me to believe that a nontrivial number of their customers tested for genealogy, or a combination of genealogy plus health.
More recently, their subscription offerring provided additional matches and other features, but also required customers to test again. That was a nonstarter for me. I suspect that this wasn’t terribly successful, given that you have to pay to test again, then additionally for a subscription, but don’t receive matching segment data anymore, or triangulation, or trees.
Of course, Regeneron might decide to invest in returning the discontinued tools and creating more. They certainly have the resources to do so. On the other hand, they could just as easily decide that genealogy tools are far outside of their realm of expertise, and not broadly attractive.
Truthfully, I was really, REALLY hoping that a genealogy-focused company like either MyHeritage or FamilyTreeDNA, both of whom accept DNA file uploads, would purchase (at least) the genealogy aspects of 23andMe and work to improve them.
Sadly, that wasn’t to be.
Now What?
For now, just “save the date” while we wait for the ombudsman report, for the court to approve the sale, and then information from Regeneron about what it plans to do with, about, or for genealogists.
Resources:
- https://restructuring.ra.kroll.com/23andMe/
- https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/regeneron-buy-bankrupt-genetic-testing-firm-23andme-256-million-2025-05-19/
- https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/regeneron-leading-us-biotechnology-company-acquire-23andme-court
- https://newsroom.regeneron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/regeneron-enters-asset-purchase-agreement-acquire-23andmer-256
- https://www.regeneron.com/
- https://dna-explained.com/2025/03/25/23andme-files-for-bankruptcy-what-you-need-to-know/
- https://dna-explained.com/2024/09/19/23andme-trouble-step-by-step-instructions-to-preserve-your-data-and-matches/
- https://dna-explained.com/2023/12/21/whats-changed-autosomal-dna-vendor-feature-changes-since-the-23andme-data-compromise/
- https://dna-explained.com/2023/12/07/23andme-concludes-their-investigation-6-9-million-customers-data-exposed/
- https://dna-explained.com/2023/10/29/23andme-dna-relatives-connections-event-history-report-and-other-security-tools/
- https://dna-explained.com/2023/10/24/the-23andme-data-exposure-new-info-considerations-and-a-pause-strategy/
- https://dna-explained.com/2023/10/07/23andme-user-accounts-exposed-change-your-password-now/
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That’s a good summary of what is happening. I just hope that somebody at Regeneron thinks that there is some extra revenue to be gained by offering genealogical services.
Thank you for the update!
I am so glad to get this information as I had read about the bankruptcy in the stock report and wondered what would happen to our DNA samples and data. Thank you so much! I will be watching to see what happens up to and including the “wedding” in June.
Cousin Roberta, this makes me so happy that I never joined 23andMe! Thanks for keeping all your readers informed throughout the whole saga.
Not to disparage your view — it’s understandable, and you’re entitled to it. I’m happy for you. But for myself, I learned so much as a 23andMe customer, including the fact that 1/4 of my family tree — 1/2 for my mother was based on false paternity.
In addition, I was able to determine who my mother’s paternal grandparents were, largely with the help of their chromosome browser (which included the X chromosome).
I also learned that one of my brothers and one of my sisters have a virtually identical X chromosome. Obviously, it’s their maternal copies, which is the only copy my brother has. They both have the same matches on this X, and they are on my mother’s paternal grandmother’s side only.
I match both of them everywhere on this copy, except for about 20 cM surrounding the centromere. That part came from my mother’s maternal grandmother. (Not her grandfather, since I match some half 2nd cousins who descend from my great grandmother but not my great grandfather in this region.)
Anyway, despite the current problems (including no more chromosome browser), I’m glad I tested there.
That doesn’t mean I’m happy with the current situation, it’s just that it was worth doing at the time. (Plus, it’s the only place I tested my now-deceased father.)
Ironically, before they removed the chromo browser, I learned that one of my sons is likely XXY having inherited my paternal X for both. (Seg. start of the duplicate was a little bit off from 1, but the seg size rounded to nearly a full X size; roughly 181cM vs. 185 cM).
So it appears he likely has undiagnosed Klinefelter syndrome that we wouldn’t have known otherwise. It is apparently pretty common (1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000), but most people don’t learn of it unless & until they have development, puberty or fertility problems.
My other son’s “full X” appears to be a little under 2/3 of the segment rom my mom & a little over 1/3 from my dad (albeit missing a small bit at each end). He received a much smaller partial duplicate of the X than my other son (his a little over 1/3 of the X seg), that also from my father.
Even more interesting is that my maternal 1st cousin’s son also has a partial duplication of my maternal aunt’s X.
If I had an X duplication myself, I would have a 50% chance of each child inheriting it, but I don’t recall seeing a duplicated X between me and my dad (not sure if I had then already tested my mom), so this would appear to be cases of “replication errors resulting in de novo duplications.” Fascinating stuff. (And definitely proves there is more to sex & gender & genetics than simply XX & XY).
Unfortunately, I cannot see these duplicated segments on FTDNA or GedMatch because I guess their programs are set to “read only” one X (presumably the longest) for a male; or something akin to that, for lack of my deeper knowledge on these things. It’s unfortunate to lose the chromo browser in general, but especially as it is the only one that was able to provide this kind of detail.
23andme was at rootstech this year. They announced they would be adding features to their website. They said the features would be better than what was previously offered. one of those features was the chromosome browser.
Regeneron could make money by licencing access to their database to a geneaology company like MyHeritage.
I have been trying to delete my 6 kits since April 4th to no avail!
Every time I make the online request, I receive the “confirmation email” with link & the link opens to a 23andMe error page “Well this is embarassing.” I have contacted C.S. by every available method, phone, fill-in-form, chat & Facebook messenger. I am told my issue will be sent to the appropriate team & I will get a response in 1-2 business days.
The last somewhat intelligible response was about 2 weeks after my most recent phone call & someone named “Taylor” emailed me and said I needed to reply to confirm I wanted to delete. I did so and have gotten no reponse back & no updates & no deletion.
If I reply to that email thread requesting status update, I get an automated message that my last message has been added to the same message thread. No update.
The confirmation email links expire in 24 hours and I make a new request to delete roughly every 2-3 days all with the same results. I have tried 2 devices – MacBook and iPhone & 3 browsers: Safari, Chrome & DuckDuckGo, all with the same error message. I have copied and pasted the confirmation email link directly into the browser & similar error message.
THIS IS A CLEAR VIOLATION OF THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS even before Regeneron gets their hands on it. A friend who had successfully deleted hers easily, sent me a Reddit thread that many are having problems re: getting the emails in the first place or logging in, but I haven’t seen or heard of any other problems like mine. But I cannot be the only one that is having this problem.
Back when I started testing in 2013, I had a whole lot more faith in companies, laws / rules & terms & conditions, and our own government before this admin. & DOGE. (My opinion, but relevant to the matter). I am worried sick about this inability to delete my kits and data.