The company that popularized the spit ancestry test went bankrupt, and the greatest treasure it had to sell was not machines or buildings, but the genetic code of millions of customers
The genetic data of 15 million people overnight became a bankruptcy commodity. The American company 23andMe, which popularized the home ancestry test where the customer spits into a tube and receives a map of their own origin, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2025, and the most valuable item in its inventory became the gigantic DNA bank it accumulated.
How does the genetic code of millions of customers become an asset for sale? Because, in the bankruptcy process, everything the company owns can be negotiated to pay…