Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Tag23andMe

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Do High AI Startup Valuations Mean Great Success, or Desperation?

The answer is important but is not as clear as we might think. First, let's look at the background

Consider a recent news report: “Anthropic is in advanced talks to raise $2 billion in a deal that would value it at $60 billion, more than triple its valuation from a year ago” says the Wall Street Journal. Anthropic’s last venture capital (VC) funding round, less than two months ago, raised $2 billion, bringing its total funding to $9.6 billion. OpenAI had raised $6.6 billion, last October just a year after it raised $10 billion from Microsoft the previous year and just months after it also raised funds on the debt and secondary markets. So that $6.6 billion round was the largest VC funding round ever, a little larger than the $6 billion that Elon Musk’s generative AI startup, xAI, raised in 2023. Read More ›

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A DNA testing kit. Generative AI

Why Is 23andMe — the Hot Gene Testing Startup — Now Worthless?

Birthed in Silicon Valley among high-tech go-getters, it should still be steaming along, right? But traditional bedrock business realities cursed it at its birth

Embattled genetic testing outfit 23andMe had a customer base of 14 million for its home DNA testing kits. Thus, many of us know at least someone who has discovered a partial Mongolian, West African, or even Neanderthal ancestry via the famous “spit kit.” The 2006 startup, birthed in Silicon Valley and riffing off the Human Genome Project (2000), had a dazzling “the future is now!” launch. The founder, Anne Wojcicki (pronounced as if “Wojisky”), was the daughter of “Godmother of Silicon Valley” Esther Wojcicki and sister of YouTube’s former CEO, Susan Wojcicki. For a time, she was married to Google co-founder Sergei Brin and had plenty of billionaire backers. Thus 23andMe raised $1.4 billion in funding. So why has the Read More ›