Larimer County Genealogical Society

Why Sir Richard Branson Gave 23andMe Millions of Dollars to Go Public

DNA company 23andMe is now planning to go public, as described in my earlier articles at http://bit.ly/3cFriIR and at http://bit.ly/3cHHBoz.

Now a new article by Brian Sozzi and published in the Yahoo!finance web site provides a lot of information about how all this came to be, thanks to a $25 million (U.S. fund) investment from multi-billionaire Richard Branson plus an additional $25 million from 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki.

Branson believes:

“And 23andMe, just their drug development side could shorten the development [time] of a new drug by as much as two and a half years, which makes coming up with new drugs that much quicker,” said Branson. “And I think 23andMe can lead to people having a healthier lifestyle.”

Richard Branson

You can read the article at: http://yhoo.it/3rpOZZR.

It appears to me that 23andMe will now focus less on genealogy and DNA identification of ethnicity and instead will focus primarily on medical issues and the development of new drugs.

Or did I read too much into this latest announcement? You decide.