Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is throwing her support behind a new medical startup — despite currently serving a federal prison term stemming from her previous biotech venture, according to a report.
Holmes, 41, is locked up at a federal prison in Bryan, Texas after being convicted in 2022 and sentenced to more than 11 years for defrauding investors in her now-infamous blood-testing startup, Theranos.
Her current partner, Billy Evans, with whom she has two children, has now raised “millions of dollars” for a new startup that sounds eerily similar to what Theranos was involved in, and he’s been getting advice from her as it gears up to launch, two anonymous sources close to the matter told NPR.
The company — called Haemanthus, Greek for “blood flower” — focuses on medical testing, utilizing technology that enables AI sensors to perform medical tests using beams of light, according to the outlet and a January patent the company secured.
Its patent says the tech can be used to test “biological material” including sweat, saliva and urine, and purports to be able to perform diagnostic tests using small amounts of blood.
Haemanthus’ core technology, known as Raman spectroscopy, has been shown to be capable of diagnosing conditions like ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and certain forms of cancer, the outlet writes. It has also been used to find improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on war battlefields.
Before her conviction, Holmes was hailed as a Silicon Valley wunderkind for her work on Theranos — which she touted as being able to perform hundreds of medical tests with just a few drops of blood, a far cry from traditional methods which require larger samples.
Her net worth soared to around $4.5 billion at the height of her fame, with Theranos forging lucrative partnerships with large companies including Safeway and Walgreens.
But the bottom dropped out in 2015 when a pair of whistleblowers came forward and exposed fraudulent practices and inaccuracies at the company, ultimately landing her and her former partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani behind bars.
After her fraud conviction, Holmes was also barred by the Securities and Exchange Commission from serving as an officer of any publicly traded company for 10 years, however those terms would not preclude her from being part of a privately held startup like Haemanthus.
This week, Holmes suffered a major legal setback after the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals declined her request to have her case reconsidered by the same trio of judges who previously affirmed her conviction.
Haemanthus filed for incorporation last February, and its principal address is given as a $2.3 million home in Austin, Texas, according to its Bizapedia listing.
Reached by The Post, Evans pointed to thread posted Sunday on Haemanthus’ official X account in which it sought to distance itself from Theranos and its jailed former CEO.
“Elizabeth Holmes has zero involvement in Haemanthus. While her company’s mistakes are lessons that we’ve learned better than anyone else, she has no role, now or in the future,” the social media post assured.
The thread also said they’ve offered NPR and the New York Times, both of which reported on Holmes’ alleged involvement in the company, “unrestricted access” to its lab, team and prototype, claiming the outlets have declined.
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