It’s unclear who might take ownership of 23andMe. But experts said there are a lot of reasons genetic data could be valuable. “There are a breadth of commercial actors that may want to use genetic data for all sorts of commercial enterprises,” said Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
Pharmaceutical companies and precision medicine companies might be interested in acquiring such data, King said. Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline purchased a $300 million stake in 23andMe in 2018 and licensed its data for drug development. Another genetic-testing company also may want to grab the database, she added.
- Date Published:3.25.2025
- Original Publication: Washington Post