Meet Anne Wojcicki, the 23andMe founder who wants to bid on the company after stepping down as CEO

Both of Wojcicki’s parents are academics: her father, Stanley, chaired Stanford University’s physics department. Her mother, Esther, known as the “Godmother of Silicon Valley,” is an author and educator who taught journalism at Palo Alto High School.

Aside from Susan, Wojcicki’s other sister, Janet, also works in academia as a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.

“My parents really looked at us always as like mini adults,” Anne Wojcicki told CNBC Make It in 2018. “I think the one thing that my parents really did is they gave us a taste of freedom. And they encouraged it. They encouraged us to find our passions, they weren’t controlling.” 

Wojcicki played ice hockey growing up — she told Fast Company in 2013 that she switched to the sport after figure skating “started to be a little bit like Honey Boo Boo on ice” — and later attended Yale University. She graduated in 1996 with a biology degree, according to The New York Times.

Post-graduation, Wojcicki began working for a biotech-related hedge fund. She told Fast Company that her academic parents were offended by the choice. 

“It was always embarrassing to come home. People were like, ‘Oh, Anne, you Wall Street girl,'” she told Fast Company. 

Wojcicki worked on Wall Street for about a decade as a healthcare analyst at firms including Investor AB and Passport Capital.  

Wojcicki founded 23andMe in 2006, along with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza. Avey and Cusenza have since left the company.

The company’s initial goal was to help people understand their own genome. The name itself comes from the fact that there are 23 pairs of chromosomes in the human genome. 

23andMe’s saliva tests — which can test for genetic predispositions, ancestry, and inherited traits — initially cost $999. The company later significantly slashed its prices to $99 for an ancestry kit and $199 for a health and ancestry kit. 

Wojcicki met Brin through her sister, Susan: In 1998, Susan Wojcicki rented Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page her garage in Menlo Park, California, in order to work on their young company, Google. 

While they were dating, Brin would leave Anne Wojcicki notes in Braille about where to meet or leave her voicemails in Morse code, Wojcicki told The New York Times in 2017.

Wojcicki and Brin married in May 2007 in a super-secret ceremony in the Bahamas. According to the San Jose Mercury News, guests weren’t told the location of the wedding and were instead flown to the Bahamas on a jet owned by Page and Brin. Once there, they were taken by boat to a sandbar where the ceremony was held — Wojcicki and Brin wore white and black swimsuits, respectively, and swam out to the ceremony site. 

The couple had two children together whose last name is Wojin, a portmanteau of their parents’ last names.

The FDA called its spit collection vial “an unapproved medical device” and placed limits on genetic testing for consumers. The company stopped providing health analyses based on consumers’ DNA and was limited to offering only ancestry results.

By 2015, the company overcame regulatory hurdles and was able to begin offering health information to customers once again. 

23andMe has partnered with GSK and created tests that can detect if consumers have an elevated risk of developing diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.

Wojcicki and Brin separated in 2013 and divorced in 2015. In 2024, Vanity Fair reported that Brin had an affair with a Google employee in her mid-20s, who was also in a relationship with another high-level Google executive at the time. (Brin did not respond to VF’s request for comment at the time and Google declined to comment to the magazine).

Brin later married Nicole Shanahan, a California-based attorney and president of Bia-Echo Foundation, after they met at a yoga retreat in 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported. The couple finalized their divorce in 2023 after the Journal reported that Shanahan had had an affair with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a longtime friend of Brin’s. Both Musk and Shanahan have repeatedly denied having an affair.

In a profile in The New York Times from 2017, Wojcicki said, “I was mad at Sergey for what he did. But I don’t carry grudges. He’s the father of my grandchildren. He was not such a good dad when the kids were babies. But he’s a very good dad now. He made his own life difficult, unfortunately. I can still be civil to him. Why not? What’s in it for me being nasty?”

The couple met through friends around 2015 and dated for about two years.

Wojcicki told The New York Times Times in 2017 that Rodriguez was “a really sweet guy,” smart, and a good person, but that their respective parenting obligations and lives on opposite coasts made the relationship unsustainable.

Wojcicki’s mom, Esther, told the Times that while she liked Rodriguez, the pairing was “a mismatch.”

In 2021 the company went public via a reverse merger with a blank-check holding company owned by Richard Branson.

By the time it went public, 23andMe had received backing from Google, GlaxoSmithKline, Sequoia Capital, Johnson & Johnson, and others, raising over $1 billion in funding, according to Crunchbase. 

Wojcicki told the Times in 2017 that she’s not a fan of “fancy cars and houses and the right dress.” She sometimes has her kids sleep in their clothes to save time in the mornings and wear their clothes into the shower on trips to save on hotel laundry costs. 

She said at the time that she cuts her kids’ hair herself, mostly shops at Payless for shoes, and rides her bike to work. 

“It’s so easy to be like, ‘I don’t have to do laundry again. I don’t have to cook again.’ But then you’re not normal,” she told the Times.

Wojcicki is also fitness-obsessed, riding her Peloton bike, taking two daily walks, and doing online yoga classes during the pandemic. Forbes wrote in 2019 that 23andMe’s headquarters “looks like a cross between a Silicon Valley startup and a fitness club.”

She’s also an investor in the longevity space, investing in the Series A round of Gameto, a biotechnology company with a mission to reprogram ovarian cells to slow down the aging in the ovary in 2022. 

Wojcicki told Forbes while she was pregnant that she decided to have the baby by herself because she wanted a third child. “So like, guess what? I executed,” she said.

“Whether you’re in a relationship or not should not dictate whether or not you have the ability to have children,” Wojcicki told Forbes. “I’m very stubborn. When there’s something I want to do, I get it done.”

After the birth of her daughter, Wojcicki became outspoken about the need to normalize breastfeeding and offer support to new mothers. She told The Washington Post in 2019 that 23andMe has created a support system for parents or hopeful parents, including on-site breastfeeding rooms, a 1,500-square-foot playroom for employees’ kids, and benefits for parents that include paid parental leave, fertility benefits, adoption assistance, and surrogacy reimbursement. 

“I’m in a luxurious position where I can do this, and normalizing it is part of how I can help people,” she said. 

After Susan announced in 2023 that she was stepping down as CEO of YouTube, Anne tweeted “Susan has been my inspiration and mentor since I was born.” She also joked that she “can’t wait” for her sister to résumé bossing her around now that she has more time. 

Susan died in 2024 at age 56 after living with lung cancer.

Shortly after, 23andMe launched a study to “understand more about how our genetics influence lung cancer,” Anne wrote on X.

“It was devastating news when she was diagnosed in 2022 and it’s still a shock to believe my vibrant, passionate, loving sister is gone,” she wrote around Thanksgiving.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and will continue operating while it seeks a buyer. Wojcicki resigned as CEO, effective immediately, but stayed on the company’s board. CFO Joe Selsavage has taken over as interim CEO.

Wojcicki wrote a post on X, formerly Twitter, with her reaction to the news.

“While I am disappointed that we have come to this conclusion and my bid was rejected, I am supportive of the company and I intend to be a bidder,” she wrote. “I have resigned as CEO of the company so I can be in the best position to pursue the company as an independent bidder.”

“We have had many successes but I equally take accountability for the challenges we have today,” she continued. “There is no doubt that the challenges faced by 23andMe through an evolving business model have been real, but my belief in the company and its future is unwavering.”

Last year, Wojcicki proposed taking the company private for 40 cents per share, but the company’s special committee of independent directors rejected it. Earlier in March 2025, she made another offer that was similarly rejected.