Following up on the news of 23andMe’s huge upcoming financing round, TechCrunch has learned that the company is raising the new financing at a $1.5 billion pre-money valuation. This compares to a $1 billion valuation in its last private round.
Dan Primack over at Axios reported the same thing this morning, but we’ve heard from our sources the number is indeed accurate. TechCrunch first reported that 23andMe is raising around $200 million in a new financing round led by Sequoia, with Fidelity also looking to participate. 23andMe, an 11-year-old startup (if we can call it that at this point), now looks like it will continue to run as a private company for some time.
The timing makes more sense given that 23andMe seems to have successfully navigated a complex web of regulations and finally gotten the green light to operate in full. The Food and Drug Administration ordered the company to cease sales of its personal genomics test back in 2013. The FDA gave a long-awaited blessing in April this year to go ahead and provide customers with a risk analysis for 10 genetically linked diseases.
That, along with Ancestry.com announcing it filed confidentially for an IPO in June this year, may have emboldened investors to take another big bet on CEO Ann Wojcicki and 23andMe — which had largely leaned on its research and development efforts
23andMe has raised more than $230 million going all the way back to 2007, well before the last generation of massive high-profile consumer IPOs like Twitter and Facebook. It includes previous investors like Google, Genentech, NEA and Johnson & Johnson, and now appears to be enlisting another storied firm in Silicon Valley.
23andMe didn’t comment on questions about the valuation after we reached out.