54gene raised $45M to put African genomes on the map — then ran out of money and CEOs

54gene was founded in 2019 by Dr Abasi Ene-Obong around a genuine gap: less than 3% of the genetic material used in global pharmaceutical research came from Africa, which meant drugs were developed against data that did not represent most of humanity. The company set out to build the African biobank and genomic dataset that pharma would pay to use, and raised $45 million across three funding rounds to build it.

The money ran out faster than the science. By mid-2022 the company had slashed salaries and begun layoffs, and a planned new funding round collapsed. Leadership churned: Ene-Obong left in October 2022, his successor Teresia Bost departed five months later, and a third chief executive, Ron Chiarello, arrived in March 2023 and was gone by July — the month the company began winding down.

By September 2023 the shutdown was public, conducted in what reporters described as a cloud of controversy — internal, financial and legal turmoil, with unpaid creditors and a biobank of research samples being shopped to potential buyers. The scientific asset was real; sources close to the process believed it had value. What 54gene never found was the business model to carry it: a data company whose customers are pharmaceutical procurement cycles burns capital on a timeline those cycles do not keep.