‘People want vanilla ice cream’: CEO Anne Wojcicki grapples with 23andMe’s dual identity

SAN FRAN­CIS­CO — 23andMe CEO Anne Wo­j­ci­c­ki said she’s “open to all ideas” in ad­dress­ing in­vestor con­fu­sion and turn­ing around a dis­ap­point­ing start to the ge­nom­ic pi­o­neer’s life as a pub­lic com­pa­ny.

Even as the JP Mor­gan Health­care Con­fer­ence brought a burst of op­ti­mism to start 2024, stoked by a ral­ly­ing biotech mar­ket and im­prov­ing macro­eco­nom­ic cli­mate, 23andMe’s stock dropped an­oth­er 14% last week. The South San Fran­cis­co-based biotech, best known for sell­ing DNA se­quenc­ing kits to mil­lions of peo­ple and now al­so de­vel­op­ing its own drugs, has seen its stock price fall over 90% since go­ing pub­lic in June 2021. It’s tak­en the com­pa­ny’s val­u­a­tion from $3.5 bil­lion at its mar­ket de­but to rough­ly $307 mil­lion. Shares of 23andMe $ME closed Wednes­day at $0.64, an all-time low.

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