Signage at 23andMe headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
23andMe has officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which means its assets — including its vast genetic database — will soon be up for sale.
The company continues to sell its at-home DNA testing kits, allowing consumers to get insight into their family histories and genetic profiles. DNA data is particularly sensitive because each person’s sequence is unique, meaning it can never be fully anonymized, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute.
If genetic data falls into the hands of bad actors, it could be used to facilitate identity theft, insurance fraud or other crimes. 23andMe has been plagued by privacy concerns in recent years after hackers accessed the information of nearly 7 million customers in October 2023.
As part of the bankruptcy process, the company said it will seek a partner that shares its commitment to customer data privacy, and that there will be no changes to how it stores, manages and protects data through the sale process.
“Our users’ privacy and data are important considerations in any transaction, and we remain committed to our users’ privacy and to being transparent with our customers about how their data is managed,” the company said in an FAQ page about the bankruptcy filing. “Any buyer of 23andMe will be required to comply with applicable law with respect to the treatment of customer data.”
Still, experts and officials are urging 23andMe customers to proceed with caution. California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Friday issued a consumer alert, encouraging residents to consider deleting their genetic data from 23andMe, which is based in his home state.
“Given 23andMe’s reported financial distress, I remind Californians to consider invoking their rights and directing 23andMe to delete their data and destroy any samples of genetic material held by the company,” Bonta said in the release.
Adrianus Warmenhoven, who serves on the security advisory board at NordVPN, described genetic data as the “blueprint of your entire biological profile.” He encouraged consumers to delete their information and be mindful of the companies they chose to share it with going forward.
“Monitor your digital footprint regularly, and you can also sign up for credit monitoring or identity theft protection services,” Warmenhoven said in a statement to CNBC. “Revoke permissions you no longer require, shut down any account you don’t use, and learn about how your data is used.”
23andMe said customers can still delete their account and accompanying data. Here’s how:
Delete your genetic data from 23andMe
Go to 23andMe.com and sign in to your account.
Click on your profile in the upper righthand corner of the site, then click “Settings.”
Scroll to the section at the very bottom of the page called “23andMe Data” and click the oval button that says “View.”
Check the boxes of any data you would like to download and click “Request Download.” This step is optional and can take up to 30 days. You can continue with the following steps while you wait.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the red button that says “Permanently Delete Data.”
You will receive an email with the subject line “23andMe Delete Account Request.” Open it, and click the button that says “Permanently Delete All Records.” Your data will not be deleted unless you complete this step.
At this point, your personal information and your account will be permanently deleted from 23andMe, according to the deletion email from the company. Additionally, your data will not be used in any future research projects, and any personal samples the company was storing will be discarded.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025.
Hamad I Mohammed | Reuters
Tesla’s shares have finally turned positive for the year.
After a dismal first quarter, which was the worst for the stock in any period since 2022, and a brutal start to April, following President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping new tariffs, Wall Street has again rallied around the electric vehicle maker.
The stock rose 3.6% on Monday to $410.26, topping its closing price of 2024 by over $6. It’s up 85% since bottoming for the year at $221.86 on April 4. A new filing revealed that CEO Elon Musk purchased about $1 billion worth of shares in the company through his family foundation.
It’s the second straight year Tesla has bounced back after a down first quarter. Last year, the shares fell 29% in the first three months before ending up 63% for 2024.
In recent weeks, analysts have praised the EV maker’s proposed pay plan for Musk, which could amount to a $1 trillion windfall for the world’s richest person over the next decade. The company has also gotten a boost from its new MegaBlocks battery energy storage systems that Tesla ships preassembled to businesses looking to lower their power costs or make greater use of electricity from renewable resources.
Even with the rebound, Tesla is the second-worst performer this year among tech’s megacaps, ahead of only Apple, which is down about 5% in 2025. Tesla is still in the midst of a multi-quarter sales slump due to an aging lineup of EVs and increased competition from lower-cost competitors in China, namely BYD.
Tesla has seen a consumer backlash, in part because of Musk’s political activities, including spending nearly $300 million to propel President Trump back to the White House and his work with the Trump administration to slash the federal workforce.
Tesla leadership has been working to shift investors’ attention to other topics such as robotaxis and humanoid robots.
However, the company has yet to deliver vehicles that are safe to use without a human onboard and ready to take control if needed. And while Musk is touting Tesla’s Optimus robots, which he says will be able to do everything from factory work to babysitting, a product is still a long way from hitting the market.
Shares of the search giant jumped more than 4% on Monday, pushing the company into territory occupied only by Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple.
The stock got a big lift in early September from an antitrust ruling by a judge, whose penalties came in lighter than shareholders feared. The U.S. Department of Justice wanted Google to be forced to divest its Chrome browser, and last year a district court ruled that the company held an illegal monopoly in search and related advertising.
But Judge Amit Mehta decided against the most severe consequences proposed by the DOJ, which sent shares soaring to a record. After the big rally, President Donald Trump congratulated the company and called it “a very good day.”
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Alphabet shares are now up more than 30% this year, compared to the 15% gain for the Nasdaq.
The $3 trillion milestone comes roughly 20 years after Google’s IPO and a little more than 10 years after the creation of Alphabet as a holding company, with Google its prime subsidiary.
CEO Sundar Pichai was named CEO of Alphabet in 2019, replacing co-founder Larry Page. Pichai’s latest challenge has been the surge of new competition due to the rise of artificial intelligence, which the company has had to manage through while also fending off an aggressive set of regulators in the U.S. and Europe.
The rise of Perplexity and OpenAI ended up helping Google land the recent favorable antitrust ruling. The company’s hopes of becoming a major AI player largely ride with Gemini, Google’s flagship suite of AI models.
The U.S. and China have reached a ‘framework’ deal for social media platform TikTok, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday.
“It’s between two private parties, but the commercial terms have been agreed upon,” he said from U.S.-China talks in Madrid.
Both President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet Friday to discuss the terms. Trump also said in a Truth Social post Monday that a deal was reached “on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save.”
Bessent indicated that the framework could pivot the platform to U.S.-controlled ownership.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The comments came during the latest round of trade discussions between the U.S. and China. Relations have soured between the two countries in recent months from Trump’s tariffs and other trade restrictions.
At the same time, TikTok parent company ByteDance faces a Sept. 17 deadline to divest the platform’s U.S. business or face being shut down in the country.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Monday that the deadline may need to be pushed back to get the deal signed, but there won’t be ongoing extensions.
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Congress passed a law last year prohibiting app store operators like Apple and Google from distributing TikTok in the U.S. due to its “foreign adversary-controlled application” status.
But Trump postponed the shutdown in January, signing an executive order in January that gave ByteDance 75 more days to make a deal. Further extensions came by way of executive orders in April and in June.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnicksaid in July that TikTok would shutter for Americans if China doesn’t give the U.S. more autonomy over the popular short-form video app.
As for who controls the platform, Trump told Fox News in June that he had a group of “very wealthy people” ready to buy the app and could reveal their identities in two weeks. The reveal never came.
He has previously said he’d be open to Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison or Tesla CEO Elon Musk buying TikTok in the U.S. Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity has submitted a bid for an acquisition, as has businessman Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty internet advocacy group, CNBC reported in January.
Trump told CNBC in an interview last year that he believed the platform was a national security threat, although the White House started a TikTok account in August.