The partner of former Theranos founder and chief executive Elizabeth Holmes, Billy Evans, has reportedly raised millions of dollars for a start-up focused on diagnostic testing.
A report in the New York Times, citing people close to the matter, suggests that the new company is called Haemanthus and will make disease diagnoses from blood, urine, and saliva, whilst also developing tools for testing new medicines. So far around $20 million has been raised by Evans.
It's not clear at the moment how much influence Holmes – currently in prison after receiving an 11-year sentence in 2022 for defrauding investors in Theranos – is exerting on the new venture. She is currently subject to a ban on serving as a director or officer of any public company until 2028, but that restriction would not apply to a privately-held firm.
Evans, the father of Holmes' two children, is the heir to a hotel empire and has also set up a company called Luminar Technologies that develops sensors for autonomous vehicles.
Stanford University drop-out Holmes (38) was found guilty of four of 11 charges brought against her – one charge of conspiracy and three charges of wire fraud – in January. She founded Theranos in 2003 when she was just 19, and in the following years was feted as a Silicon Valley superstar, with some calling her the 'next Steve Jobs'.
Things started to unravel after she was accused along with Theranos' former President, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, of knowingly misleading shareholders in Theranos with the promise that the company's technology could diagnose a battery of diseases with just a few drops of blood, rather than a larger blood sample drawn from a patient's vein.
It turned out that was a bogus claim, as some testing being held up as evidence of the technology was being carried out on standard blood testing machines, and the company eventually folded in 2018, after reaching a peak valuation of around $9 billion.
Over the course of Theranos' life, Holmes and Balwani raised around $700 million from investors with inflated claims about the accuracy of its testing platform.
According to the NYT article, similarly bold claims are being made for Haemanthus' technology, which will use a laser to scan bodily fluids on a "molecular level" and detect diseases in seconds, and has a plan to develop a wearable device.
The Austin, Texas company has filed a US patent (No. 18/762412) on a Raman spectroscopy system that can be used to analyse biological materials and also claims other applications such as wastewater monitoring.
https://pharmaphorum.com/news/partner-ex-theranos-ceo-raising-cash-testing-start
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