A Facebook post has claimed that the investment management firm BlackRock owns 75% of the genealogy company Ancestry. This spawned other claims that BlackRock now owns the ANCESTRY.com DNA database and lots of other personal information of its customers.

Like many other claims posted to Facebook (now called meta.com), there is but one problem with the claim: it isn’t true.

Ancestry is actually owned by another investment management firm called Blackstone.

Ancestry was acquired back in 2020

We can see where the confusion might come from, but Ancestry was actually bought by a different, though similarly titled investment management firm, called Blackstone, back in 2020.

The deal saw Blackstone acquire the family history website and DNA testing service for around $4.7 billion, representing around a 75% stake in the company, according to multiple reports at the time.

Despite the similarity between their names, Blackstone and BlackRock are two separate asset management companies.

You can read more about this fairy tale in an article written by Hannah Smith and published in the Full Fact web site (which specializes in disproving false rumors) at https://fullfact.org/online/ancestry-ownership/.