Anne E. Wojcicki (/wuːˈtʃɪtski/woo-CHITS-kee; born July 28, 1973) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded and serves as CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe. She founded the company in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza to provide the general public access to their genetic information. She is a co-founder and board member of the Breakthrough Prize. Wojcicki married Google co-founder Sergey Brin in 2007, and divorced eight years later.
What Is Anne Wojcicki’s Net Worth?
Anne Wojcicki is an American businesswoman and entrepreneur who has a net worth of $800 million. Wojcicki is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of the biotechnology and personal genetics company 23andMe. Anne co-founded 23andMe with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza in 2006, and in 2008, “Time” magazine named their personal genome test “Invention of the Year.”
In 2013, Wojcicki was named “The Most Daring CEO” by “Fast Company,” and she co-founded the Breakthrough Prize, which rewards “research into curing diseases and extending human life.” Anne was featured on “Forbes” magazine’s “Global Game Changers List 2017,” and in 2021, she was ranked #25 on its “America’s Richest Self-Made Women” list and #90 on its “World’s Most Powerful Women” list.
In June 2021, 23andMe entered into a merger with Richard Branson‘s VG Acquisition Corp and was renamed 23andMe Holding Co. The deal “raised nearly $600 million and boosted 23andMe’s value to $3.5 billion.”
Google Connection
In the late 1990s, her sister Susan was living in a house in Menlo Park, California. To earn extra money, in September 1998 Susan rented her garage to two Stanford PhD students who had recently launched an internet search engine. Those students were Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their company was Google.com.
Anne never worked for Google but Susan was Google employee #16 and today serves as CEO of YouTube. Through Susan, Anne met and began dating Sergey Brin. They married in 2007 and had two children together before divorcing in 2015. Technically they separated in 2013.
Career
After graduating, Wojcicki worked as a health care consultant at Passport Capital, a San Francisco-based investment fund and at Investor AB. She was a health care investment analyst for four years, overseeing health care investments, focusing on biotechnology companies. Disillusioned by the culture of Wall Street and its attitude towards health care, she decided to forego taking the MCAT to enroll in medical school and instead decided to focus on biological research.
Wojcicki is best known as the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe, a direct to consumer DNA testing company, which allows for consumers to test for ancestry and health risks. She founded the company in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza with a goal of providing common people access to their genetic information, which could further provide information on cures for diseases or treatments, especially with the help of Glaxo and their $300 million investment. Wojcicki has expressed interest in “revolutioniz[ing] health care” with DNA testing, as it could provide consumers with enough information to predict potential genetic illnesses.
Consumers can purchase testing kits for $99, $199, and $499 which provide information on ancestry, health, and genetic traits. The company takes saliva samples that are mailed in by buyers, and processes the genetic information, posting the results online for the buyer to view.
The company is named for the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell. The company’s personal genome test kit was named “Invention of the Year” by Time magazine in 2008. Beginning in 2015, the Food and Drug Administration started to give approval to 23andMe’s health-related tests, including risk from cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, certain cancers, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and coeliac disease. In 2018, 23andMe entered into a four-year collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline to develop new medicines.
Wojcicki is a member of the Xconomists, an ad hoc team of editorial advisors for the tech news and media company Xconomy. In October 2013, Fast Company named Wojcicki “The Most Daring CEO”. She is a co-founder and board member of the Breakthrough Prize. As of 2020, she is listed as number 93 in Forbes list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. In August 2021 Wojcicki joined the board of Cazoo.
Wojcicki has been closely involved in the downtown business district of Los Altos, California. In approximately 2005, Wojcicki and her then husband Sergey Brin bought at least half a dozen commercial properties in downtown Los Altos. Under the name of Passerelle Investment Company, they sponsored events and urban planning initiatives throughout the downtown business district. In 2016, the firm was renamed to Los Altos Community Investments and given a tighter focus on commercial real-estate development. In 2021, Los Altos Community Investments opened a food hall in downtown Los Altos called the State Street Market.
Personal life
Wojcicki married Google co-founder Sergey Brin in May 2007. They have a son, born in 2008, and a daughter born in late 2011. They separated in 2013, and divorced in 2015. Brin and Wojcicki jointly run the Brin Wojcicki Foundation. They have donated extensively to the Michael J. Fox Foundation and in 2009 gave $1 million to support the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. She joined The Giving Pledge in 2022, committing to donating most of her wealth.
Her grandfather, Franciszek Wójcicki, was a People’s Party and Polish People’s Party politician who had been elected MP during the 1947 Polish legislative election. Her grandmother, Janina Wójcicka Hoskins, was a Polish-American librarian at the Library of Congress who was responsible for building the largest collection of Polish material in the United States
