Sam Altman investerar i Theranos-liknande startup

Theranos Inc. () was an American privately held corporation that was touted as a breakthrough health technology company. Founded in 2003 by then 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos raised more than US$700 million from venture capitalists and private investors, resulting in a $10 billion valuation at its peak in 2013 and 2014. The company claimed that it had devised blood tests that required very small amounts of blood and that could be performed rapidly and accurately, all using compact automated devices which the company had developed. These claims were later proven to be false.A turning point came in 2015, when medical research professor John Ioannidis, and later professor of clinical biochemistry Eleftherios Diamandis, along with investigative journalist John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal, questioned the validity of Theranos's technology. The company faced a string of legal and commercial challenges from medical authorities, investors, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), state attorneys general, former business partners, patients and others. By June 2016, Forbes estimated that Holmes's personal net worth had dropped from $4.5 billion to "nothing". After several years of struggle, lawsuits, and sanctions from CMS, what remained of the company was dissolved on September 4, 2018. Theranos, Holmes and former company president Sunny Balwani were charged with fraud by the SEC in 2018. Holmes and Balwani were also charged with wire fraud and conspiracy, with Holmes being found guilty on four counts in January 2022 and sentenced that November to 11 years and 3 months in prison. Balwani was convicted on all 12 counts brought against him in July 2022, and in December 2022 was sentenced to 12 years and 11 months in prison and 3 years of probation.

Elizabeth Anne Holmes (born February 3, 1984) is an American former biotechnology entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud in connection to her blood-testing company, Theranos. The company's valuation soared after it claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing methods that needed only very small volumes of blood, such as from a fingerprick. In 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the United States on the basis of a $9-billion valuation of her company. In the following year, as revelations of potential fraud about Theranos's claims began to surface, Forbes revised its estimate of Holmes's net worth to zero, and Fortune named her in its feature article on "The World's 19 Most Disappointing Leaders".The decline of Theranos began in 2015, when a series of journalistic and regulatory investigations revealed doubts about the company's claims and whether Holmes had misled investors and the government. In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Theranos, Holmes, and former Theranos chief operating officer (COO) Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani with raising $700 million from investors through a "massive fraud" involving false or exaggerated claims about the accuracy of the company's blood-testing technology; Holmes settled the charges by paying a $500,000 fine, returning 18.9 million shares to the company, relinquishing her voting control of Theranos, and accepting a ten-year ban from serving as an officer or director of a public company. In June 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Holmes and Balwani on fraud charges. Her trial in the case of U.S. v. Holmes, et al. ended in January 2022 when Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors, and acquitted of defrauding patients. She was sentenced to serve 11+1⁄4 years in prison, beginning on May 30, 2023. She and Balwani were fined $452 million to be paid to the victims of the fraud. The credibility of Theranos was attributed in part to Holmes's personal connections and ability to recruit the support of influential people, including Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Mattis, and Betsy DeVos, all of whom had served or would go on to serve as U.S. presidential cabinet officials. Holmes was in a clandestine romantic relationship with Balwani during most of Theranos's history. Following the collapse of Theranos, she started dating hotel heir Billy Evans, with whom she has two children. Theranos and Holmes's career are the subject of a book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018), by The Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou; an HBO documentary film, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019); a true crime podcast, The Dropout; and a Hulu miniseries based on the podcast, The Dropout (2022). Holmes is incarcerated at Federal Prison Camp, Bryan.