23andMe Admits ‘Mining’ Your DNA Data Is Its Last Hope

With the business in a tailspin, 23andMe’s CEO assures investors there’s still plenty of money it can make on your genes.

23andMe is in a death spiral. Almost everyone who wants a DNA test already bought one, a nightmare data breach ruined the company’s reputation, and 23andMe’s stock is so close to worthless it might get kicked off the Nasdaq. CEO Anne Wojcicki is on a crisis tour, promising investors the company isn’t going out of business because she has a new plan: 23andMe is going to double down on mining your DNA data and selling it to pharmaceutical companies.

“We now have the ability to mine the dataset for ourselves, as well as to partner with other groups,” Wojcicki said in an interview with Wired. “It’s a real resource that we could apply to a number of different organizations for their own drug discovery.”

That’s been part of the plan since day one, but now it looks like it’s going to happen on a much larger scale. 23andMe has always coerced its customers into giving the company...