Latest news with #TTAMResearchInstitute
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
23andMe back on the auction block after former CEO makes 11th-hour bid
DNA testing company 23andMe is back up for sale, throwing a purchase agreement reached last month into chaos, court filings show. The board of directors of 23andMe, which filed for bankruptcy in March, had agreed to sell the company and its assets to pharmaceutical firm Regeneron for $256m after conducting an auction in April. However, the founder and former CEO of the genetics company, Anne Wojcicki, put in a $305m bid through a newly formed non-profit, TTAM Research Institute, after the auction ended and pushed the bankruptcy court to re-open the sale process. She tried to buy the company multiple times during its long decline and bankruptcy but was rejected by the board. TTAM's offer of $305m will serve as a starting price for the secondary sale process, and Regeneron will be permitted to submit a competing bid that is at least $10m more. Both companies will be able to then submit a final offer. Whoever loses will qualify for a $10m breakup fee, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news. Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion The reopening of the auction puts the valuable trove of DNA data that 23andMe has accrued back on the market. Consumer concerns over who will control their data after a sale and what they would do with it prompted hundreds of 23andMe customers to delete their DNA info from the site. As part of its acquisition, Regeneron said it would comply with 23andMe's privacy policies and applicable laws with respect to the use of customer data. In the weeks since the acquisition was agreed upon, Regeneron said that it had already started to work with a consumer privacy ombudsman and was 'preparing to work with regulators, among others, to assure all interested stakeholders that 23andMe will be in safe hands and will not face the data breach issues that plagued it in the past', according to court filings. Regeneron agreed to the terms of the secondary sale but in court filings lamented that TTAM was permitted to submit the bid after the auction closed in spite of rules that prohibited such late bids. The company accused both TTAM and 23andMe of violating the court-ordered bidding procedures, including the deadline for bids and overbids. 'Since the auction ended, Regeneron has been subject to remarkably unfair treatment,' court filings read. 'Despite auction rules that unambiguously prohibit bids after the auction, and that likewise prohibit bidders from seeking to reopen the auction, TTAM—a vehicle controlled by the Debtors' former CEO, which participated at every stage of the auction—has submitted a flurry of new bids and has pressed non-stop to reopen the auction.' Regeneron further pointed to an eighth circuit ruling that warned against allowing buyers to 'bide[] its time during the auction, taking an opportunity to survey the landscape of the sale, only later to submit an upset bid at the lowest possible price'. The company also cited Wojcicki's previous failed attempts to purchase the company or take it private. 'In short, and given that history, no bidder would ever voluntarily participate in an auction in which the Wojcicki Parties, who led the company into this proceeding, could use the auction process as a vehicle for price discovery, with a one-way option to reopen the process—and to bid again—after the auction concludes,' Regeneron's attorneys wrote in court filings. 23andMe, Regeneron and TTAM did not respond to requests for comment.
Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Business
- Gizmodo
23andMe Re-Opens Data Auction With $305 Million Bid From Former CEO
After a brief court dispute, 23andMe and all its assets are up for auction once again. The second time around, former CEO Amy Wojcicki has started out hot with an opening bid nearly $50 million higher than the previous auction's winner. Last month, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals purchased the bankrupt 23andMe for $256 million, beating out Wojcicki's nonprofit, TTAM Research Institute's opening bid by over $100 million. However, Wojcicki quickly requested that a U.S. judge reopen the auction. In her filing, Wojcicki argued that 23andMe's advisors capped her maximum bid at $250 million due to concerns about TTAM's 'financial wherewithal.' Now, Wojcicki says she has the additional backing of an unnamed Fortune 500 company valued at over $400 billion. On Wednesday, all parties involved reached a compromise in federal court, according to Bloomberg, which allowed Wojcicki to reopen the process with a $305 million bid. Now, Regeneron can counter with an offer of at least $315 million. After that, Wojcicki gets another bid and then Regeneron can respond with the auction's final offer. The downfall of 23andMe has been fascinating to watch. Once valued at $6 billion, 23andMe filed for bankruptcy in March after its worth plummeted to nearly $0. Pinpointing the exact cause of 23andMe's collapse is hard. You can easily argue that it was inevitable given the limits of its original concept. Although the company tried finding other ways to generate profit, nothing really worked. For example, last year, the Washington Post reported that 23andMe's attempt to launch a subscription service with personalized reports and advice bombed. However, 23andMe's massive 2023 data breach certainly didn't help its survival. Hackers were able to obtain information about 6.9 million people, including names, birth years, relationship labels, family names, and locations. 23andMe took five months to notice the hack, two months to publicly admit its true severity, and even tried placing the blame on customers. (Per Bloomberg, 23andMe is trying to resolve claims from a class action lawsuit related to the data breach as part of the bankruptcy.) Personally, I think it's silly to trust any company within the consumer DNA testing industry. If you have a similar view, you're likely not super affected by 23andMe's bankruptcy. So, you might not care about the ongoing auction. However, the fact that it's even allowed to proceed at all is concerning. What's ultimately up for sale right now is 23andMe's database of over 15 million people's DNA. When the auction was first announced, California's Attorney General urged people to request that 23andMe delete their data and lawmakers opened an investigation stating that with 'the lack of a federal comprehensive data privacy and security law, we write to express our great concern about the safety of Americans' most sensitive personal information.' Under 23andMe's privacy policy, your information is deleted upon request. Whichever bidder wins the auction has agreed to comply with the existing promise. But no one who used 23andMe's products explicitly agreed to be part of this trade deal. The sale of something as sensitive as DNA, which you cannot change like a password or an email address, should require more than implicit consent. In other words, it shouldn't be up to an individual to opt out by requesting their data to be deleted. Without explicit permission from each person in that database, the sale shouldn't be allowed to go on at all.
Fast Company
6 days ago
- Business
- Fast Company
23andMe's Anne Wojcicki moves to reopen auction with support from a Fortune 500 company
(Corrects paragraph 3 to say 23andMe filed for bankruptcy in March, not April) The founder of 23andMe, Anne Wojcick i, has asked a U.S. judge to reopen an auction for the genetic testing company, saying she has the support of a Fortune 500 company with a current market capitalization of more than $400 billion. Wojcicki did not name the Fortune 500 company in court filings. South San Francisco, California-based 23andMe filed for bankruptcy in March, seeking to sell its business at auction after a decline in consumer demand and a 2023 data breach that exposed sensitive genetic and personal information of millions of customers. Last month, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals agreed to buy the firm for $256 million, topping a $146 million bid from Wojcicki and TTAM Research Institute, which was founded by Wojcicki and describes itself as a California non-profit public benefit corporation. In a filing dated May 31, Wojcicki claimed that 23andMe's debtors had attempted to tilt the sales process away from TTAM and in favor of Regeneron. TTAM and Wojcicki said in the filing that 23andMe's financial and legal advisers unfairly capped their maximum bid at $250 million due to misplaced concerns about TTAM's 'financial wherewithal'. The plaintiffs said the auction was prematurely concluded before they had the opportunity to submit a bid that would have exceeded $280 million. The company's debtors said the auction results came after an extensive and careful consideration by a four-member special committee of independent directors, according to the filing. According to another filing, 23andMe is seeking court approval to let Wojcicki and Regeneron submit final proposals by June 12. 23andMe is also seeking a $10 million breakup fee for Regeneron if Wojcicki's bid is ultimately accepted. Regeneron said it does not comment on the ongoing proceeding and aims to close the acquisition as intended.
