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.
At the Meta Connect developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg, head of the Facebook group Meta, shows the prototype of computer glasses that can display digital objects in transparent lenses.
Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday unveiled the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, the social media company’s first consumer-ready smart glasses with a built-in display.
The glasses, which costs $799, contain a small digital display that can be controlled via hand gestures through a wristband powered by neural technology, confirming a CNBC report in August. A promotional video of the new smart glasses appeared on Meta’s YouTube page on Monday but was later removed.
Tune in Thursday at 11:00 a.m. ET: Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox joins CNBC TV to discuss with Julia Boorstin the highlights of Meta’s annual Connect event, live from the company’s HQ in Menlo Park CA.
The new smart glasses are a bridge between the company’s audio-only Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and the experimental Orion augmented reality glasses that the company revealed at last year’s Connect event. Orion can overlay 3D visuals over a person’s real-world field of view with the help of a wireless computing puck, but the glasses are expensive to make and not yet available to consumers.
The Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses come with the Meta Neural Band, an EMG wristband that allows users to control the device using hand gestures.
“These are glasses with the classic style that you’d expect from Ray-Ban, but they’re the first AI glasses with a high resolution display and a fully weighted Meta neural band,” Zuckerberg said.
With the new glasses, people can do tasks like watch videos through the display or see and respond to text messages, Zuckerberg said. The display doesn’t block a person’s view, and it disappears when not being used, he said.
The glasses go on sale in the U.S. on Sept. 30.
During a demo, Zuckerberg repeatedly attempted to call Meta tech chief Andrew Bosworth unsuccessfully.
“This is uh — you know, it happens,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta has been developing its smart glasses with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica since 2019, and last year renewed a long-term partnership agreement to continue making the products.
The company on Wednesday also debuted the Oakley Meta Vanguard smart glasses, intended for athletes who participate in high-intensity sports like snowboarding and mountain biking. The Oakley-branded glasses will cost $499 when they launch on Oct. 21, making it $100 more expensive than the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses that went on sale in June.
The Oakley Meta Vanguard smart glasses have a sportier look than the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses thanks to a wraparound design that extends its colorful lenses around a person’s temples. Unlike the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses, the new model contains a button on the underside of its frames so that athletes who wear helmets can more easily capture photos and videos.
The new sports-centric smart glasses have up to nine hours of battery life, can capture 3K video and contain speakers that are louder than their predecessors. The glasses can connect with Garmin-branded fitness watches to track certain stats like their heart rates using the Meta AI assistant. Preorders start today.
Meta also debuted the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2), the latest version of the company’s original smart glasses. The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) costs $379, up from $299 for the version released in 2023. The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) has double the battery life of the previous model, lasting 8 hours on a single charge, and a more powerful camera that can capture 3K Ultra HD video. The new glasses go on sale today.
Zuckerberg also announced Horizon TV, pitching it as a way to watch television shows, sporting events and movies using the company’s Quest VR headsets. Some of Meta’s partners who will be contributing content to the app include Disney and Universal Pictures, Zuckerberg said.
Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Cybersecurity company Netskope is eying a $7.3 billion valuation after pricing shares at $19 for its upcoming IPO, at the top end of its expected range.
Netskope will start trading on Thursday on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “NTSK.” The share sale raised $908.2 million.
Earlier this week, Netskope lifted its expected pricing range to between $17 and $19 a share, up from an original range of $15 to $17. The company revealed plans to go public last month.
Netskope’s offering comes amid a hot period for IPO activity after a years-long lull spurred by step inflation and soaring interest rates. The long-overdue resurgence has fueled optimism on Wall Street and in a venture capital industry eager for return on investment.
Ticket reseller StubHub slid 6% it its first day of trading Wednesday, but a lackluster start may not be reason for concern. CoreWeave went public in March and closed flat in its first day, with shares going on to triple.
Swedish buy now, pay later firm Klarna jumped 15% in its debut this month. Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchangeBullish, design software company Figma and stablecoin issuer Circle have also jumped since their recent market debuts.
Read more CNBC tech news
The cybersecurity sector is also undergoing a busy stretch for dealmaking fueled by ongoing artificial intelligence advancements and a shifting threat landscape.
Santa Clara, California-based Netskope was founded in 2012 and is led by co-founder and CEO Sanjay Beri. At the end of July, the company said it had 2,910 employees and 4,317 customers across 90 countries.
Annual recurring revenues rose 33% to $707 million at the end of July and revenues reached $328 million for the six months ended July 31. The company also reported a net loss of $170 million during that period.
Some of Netskope’s significant backers include Accel, Iconiq and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Nscale, the UK-headquartered AI infrastructure provider.
Courtesy: Nscale
Two years ago, Nscale was a brand new startup in the U.K. that had yet to raise any outside funding or officially announce its existence.
Last year the London-based company came out of stealth, and in December announced that it had raised its Series A fundraising, totaling $155 million.
Now, Nscale finds itself at the center of the action in the hottest market on the planet: artificial intelligence. And it has close to $700 million in fresh capital from Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company.
In press releases on Tuesday, Nscale was named as an AI infrastructure partner for Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI, as the companies expand their buildouts in the U.K. Nscale then said it signed a five-year $6.2 billion agreement with Microsoft and Aker to develop “hyperscale AI infrastructure” in Europe, specifically Norway, where Aker is headquartered.
OpenAI made prior headlines with Nscale, announcing plans in July for a data center in Norway for a Stargate-branded AI data center. Nscale agreed to commit $1 billion for the project, with the goal of racking up 100,000 Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) at the site before 2027.
It’s a remarkably quick rise for a company that wasn’t even around when OpenAI kicked off the generative AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. At that time, what’s now Nscale was part of Arkon Energy, which was established a year earlier to provide infrastructure for cryptocurrency mining. Nscale was spun out to address soaring demand for data centers capable of handling AI workloads.
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Like CoreWeave, which went public this year and now sports a market cap of $58 billion, Nscale is combining data center space, power and lots of GPUs with its own software in order to an provide end-to-end service for AI infrastructure.
CoreWeave, which supplies infrastructure to Microsoft, Google, Nvidia and OpenAI, also has roots in crypto. Founded in 2017, the company built up its initial fleet of Nvidia GPUs for ethereum mining before pivoting to AI.
Nscale didn’t respond to a request for comment following this week’s announcements, but CEO Josh Payne, who previously founded Arkon, told CNBC in late July that the company was targeting two big problems in Europe. One is a lack of sufficient computing capacity and the other is a “very fragmented market.”
“What the continent needs is large AI infrastructure projects deploying compute [power],” Payne said, after the announcement with OpenAI for the Norway buildout. “The ecosystem can consume from the project to build AI products, to generate productivity growth and economic benefit.”
Payne wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday that the agreement with Microsoft and Aker is a “huge win for European-owned AI infrastructure.”
Europe has been pushing the concept of “sovereign AI,” requiring data centers and AI workloads to be located and processed on European soil. Nscale has quickly emerged as an important player in the U.K.’s bid to evolve into a global leader in AI. In January, Britain laid out an AI “action plan,” promising to reduce bureaucracy to help its domestic AI sector thrive.
While Nscale is addressing the European market, many of its early partners are big U.S. AI vendors. They timed their announcements on Tuesday to President Donald Trump’s state visit to the U.K.
On Wednesday, Trump visited Windsor Castle and met with King Charles, Queen Camilla and other members of the royal family. His trip comes at a contentious moment for U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is under pressure to bring stability to the country after the exit of Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner over a house tax scandal and a major cabinet reshuffle.
Microsoft headlined the U.K. announcements, committing $15.5 billion of new investment to computing equipment. The software giant said it plans to work with Nscale to construct what will become the U.K.’s largest supercomputer in Loughton, a suburban town in the English county of Essex.
The site will initially house 23,040 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs to be delivered in the first quarter of 2027. When it goes live, it will generate 50 megawatts of AI capacity, scalable to 90 megawatts, according to a statement from Nscale.
“No one can make that kind of capital investment unless they’ve got somebody already committed to spend the money once the work is complete, and that’s the role we’re playing,” Microsoft President Brad Smithsaid Tuesday, adding the deal represents a major vote of confidence in Nscale.
OpenAI said it would launch a U.K. version of Stargate through a partnership with Nscale and Nvidia. OpenAI will deploy 8,000 GPUs in the project’s first phase early next year, with the option to expand capacity to approximately 31,000 GPUs over time.
Stargate U.K. will operate across a number of sites in the country — one of the early ones being Cobalt Park, an industrial state in the Northern English city Newcastle. Stargate was initially spawned in the U.S. in January as part of President Trump’s effort to push investments in AI infrastructure.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends the “Winning the AI Race” Summit in Washington D.C., U.S., July 23, 2025.
Kent Nishimura | Reuters
Nvidia’s announcement on Tuesday included an investment of up to £11 billion ($15 billion) with Nscale and CoreWeave to boost U.K. AI infrastructure.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang separately revealed on Wednesday that the chipmaker had made a £500 million ($683 million) equity investment into Nscale.
“We convinced ourselves that Nscale could be a national champion for AI infrastructure in the U.K.,” Huang told journalists at a press conference in London.
Nick Patience, AI practice lead at the Futurum Group, told CNBC that Nscale is “a key part of Nvidia’s push in the U.K. market and an acknowledgment by the government that it has to do something to get the AI infrastructure built here, which has been a long slog.”
Rapid growth
After exiting stealth in May of last year, Nscale’s first public announcement came two months later, when the company partnered with UAE’s Open Innovation AI to deploy 30,000 GPUs. Around the same time, Nscale said it was acquiring Kontena, which was founded in 2018 and specialized in high-performance computing data centers.
The next month, Nscale announced an agreement with Asian telecom company Singtel to offer a “GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS),” and serve customers in Europe and Southeast Asia. Initially, Nscale’s infrastructure relied on GPUs from Advanced Micro Devices. Today, the startup promotes various offerings from market leader Nvidia.
Nscale’s big financing landed in December, when the company said it raised $155 million in a round led by Sandton Capital Partners, with participation from Kestrel0x1, Blue Sky Capital Managers and Florence Capital.
Sandton co-founder Rael Nurick said in the press release that with its “unique vertically integrated approach, Nscale is building the hyperscale AI platform to power AI at scale.”
Nscale said at the time that it had grown its AI data center pipeline to 1.3 gigawatts from 300 megawatts the prior year to and that it was aiming to have 350,000 GPUs running by the end of 2027.
By comparison, CoreWeave said at a banking conference last week that its portfolio consists of “about 2.2 gigawatts of capacity that’s coming online.” The company said in its IPO prospectus in March that its 32 data centers were running 250,000 GPUs.
It’s been a whirlwind few years for Payne, Nscale’s founder. While he was serving as executive chairman of Arkon, he was also operating chief at Australia’s Battery Future Acquisition Corp., a blank check company that says it’s “targeting critical battery minerals and related supply chains.”
He’s got a lot of work in front of him.
Building out AI data centers with costly GPUs is a capital intensive process that’s historically required a hefty amount of debt. CoreWeave had raised a total of $12.4 billion in debt through the end of 2024, in addition to well over $1 billion in equity financing before its IPO. It announced a $1.5 billion bond sale in July after a $2 billion debt offering in May.
Nscale was trying to raise $1.8 billion earlier this year through a private credit deal led by bankers at Goldman Sachs, according to Bloomberg.
In the December video tied to Nscale’s equity fundraising, Payne called it “one of the largest Series As raised in U.K., European history.” He said the company would use the cash to deploy up to another 4,000 GPUs in its data center in Norway and to develop up to 180 megawatts of capacity in the company’s portfolio.
The aim, Payne said, was to deploy 50,000 GPUs by the end of 2025 and 150,000 by the end of next year.
“The key challenges that we see in the market is the significant increase in density at the GPU level,” he said. “This funding allows us to scale up materially” he said, and to become “one of the largest players in Europe.”