In late March, Facebook’s former CFO Gideon Yu had quit. The rumor about why Yu left was that he was not getting along with Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. An internal memo went around that Facebook was looking for a CFO that has more experience with a public company.
This is where former Genentech CFO David Ebersman comes in. Genetech is a biotech company that was bought out by Swiss company Hoffman-La Roche for $46.8 billion on March 26, 2009. Genentech is also an investor in 23andMe, a genetics company that was started by Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s wife. Ebersman worked at Genentech for 15 years, but Hoffman already had a CFO making his job much less important.
Google has reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that they have invested $2.6 million in the genetic testing startup 23andMe as part of a Series B round of funding. 23andMe was co-founded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki.
It is uncertain whether the deal was made directly through Google or through their Ventures subsidiary. The $2.6 million round of fund was part of a $12.6 million Series B round. The other $10 million came from Sergey Brin’s personal wealth of $12 billion. This brings 23andMe’s total funding to about $21.6 million. Other investors include Genentech, New Enterprise Associates, and Mohr Davidow Ventures.
Google owns a minority interest in 23andMe and also plans to lease space to the genetics company. Google wrote in the filing that they took measures to ensure the decision before investing to make the agreement was free of conflict of interest. Sergey Brin was not part of the investment discussions according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
23andMe is a personal genomics and biotech company based in Mountain View, California. 23andMe offers tests for genome-wide, single nucleotide polymorphisms for the cost of $299. 23andMe received $3.9 million investment from Google. Google co-founder is married to 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki.
Today it was announced that 23andMe raised an additional $11 million of a $24.26 million venture round according to a regulatory filing. 23andMe’s first round of funding was $9 million by Google, Genentech, New Enterprise Associates, and Mohr Davidow Ventures.
In this new round, there wasn’t any investor information mentioned. No info on whether Google Ventures or Google.org was part of the investment. 23andMe’s website currently only lists New Enterprise Associates and Google as their investors. If we find out who the investors are, we’ll update with a new post.
