Veritas Genetics is halting its US operations, as GenomeWeb has reported. In a tweet, the company said the move was due to an unanticipated financial circumstances.
CEO Mirza Cifric tells GenomeWeb that Veritas had to lay off much of its US staff when planned financing didn't proceed as expected. CNBC writes that many of Veritas' investors — including Simcere Pharmaceutical and Lilly Asia Ventures — are based in China. This, it adds, may have made other possible investors worried, as some firms with Chinese investors have come under scrutiny by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. According to CNBC, CFIUS ordered a Chinese firm that had invested in PatientsLikeMe to divest its stake and that PatientsLikeMe was eventually sold to UnitedHealth.
This move affects only the firm's US operations and may be temporary, as Cifric tells GenomeWeb that it has not yet shut down its US lab, nor formally closed. Customers outside the US will be serviced by Veritas Europe/Latin America, the company notes in its tweet.
"We are currently assessing all paths forward, including strategic options," the tweet adds.
Earlier this year, Veritas experienced a customer data breach in which customers' data, though not their health information, was exposed.