The following teaser is from an article posted at pymnts.com:
Genealogy is big business — and poised to get bigger — as demonstrated by investment firm Blackstone’s December 2020 purchase of Ancestry for $4.7 billion. Further driving the point home was the announcement on Thursday (Sept. 16) that Ancestry is appointing former Amazon and Facebook executives to top positions at the company.
That development is renewing the debate about the commercialization of genetic data and how it may be monetized, with everyone from Big Pharma to the FBI asking for access.
In a statement, Ancestry said, “Brian Donnelly, formerly head of Diagnostics and Genomics at Amazon, has been named Senior Vice President and General Manager of AncestryDNA, and Ashish Nayyar, Facebook’s Senior Director of Data Science, has been appointed Chief Data Officer.” Additionally, Ancestry Senior Vice President Heather Friedland has been promoted to Chief Product Officer. The company says it has over 3 million paying subscribers.
Ancestry President and CEO Deborah Liu said, “We are thrilled to welcome these three outstanding thought leaders to our executive bench, each of whom bring a wealth of experience from both within Ancestry, and other leading technology companies. I am confident that together we will continue to drive innovation and growth so that we can empower even more journeys of personal discovery globally.”
What shape these DNA-fueled “journeys of personal discovery” will take going forward is a hotly contested issue. For example, while not a money-making proposition, the FBI has used a commercial DNA database to catch criminals, most notably the notorious Golden State Killer.
Read the full article at: https://www.pymnts.com/subscriptions/2021/ancestry-taps-big-tech-execs-dna-firm-looks-to-deepen-its-roots/