Genealogy tracking online is a big business, and today comes some M&A news for one of the bigger names in the field. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Israel’s MyHeritage.com — which lets people test DNA and track their family lineage — is getting acquired by Francisco Partners, for a price that a source close to the deal tells us is $600 million.
A spokesperson for MyHeritage confirmed the deal to TechCrunch over the phone but not the price. Francisco Partners has not responded to our request for comment but we’ll update this post as we learn more.
From what we understand the deal will be announced officially very soon.
The deal is coming at a time when another major DNA player, 23andme, is going public way of a SPAC at a valuation of $3.5 billion.
Although a significantly smaller sum, $600 million would be a really strong exit for MyHeritage, which had only disclosed some $56 million in funding, with investors including Accel, Index and Bessemer.
MyHeritage has had a very colorful, not always positive, profile in the public eye. It emerged as a key player in solving one of the most elusive murder cases in decades, the hunt for the Golden State Killer.
But is has also been the subject of a major data breach, compromising some 92 million accounts in 2018.
We’ll update this post as we learn more.
