Elizabeth Holmes

Elizabeth Anne Holmes (born February 3, 1984) is an American businesswoman who founded and was the CEO of Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company. Theranos soared in valuation after the company claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing testing methods that could use surprisingly small volumes of blood, such as from a fingerprick. By 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America, on the basis of a $9 billion valuation of her company. The next year, following revelations of potential fraud about Theranos' claims, Forbes had revised its published estimate of Holmes' net worth to zero, and Fortune had named her one of the "World's Most Disappointing Leaders". The decline of Theranos began in 2015, when a series of journalism and regulatory investigations revealed doubts about the company's technology claims and whether Holmes had misled investors and the government. In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Theranos and Holmes with deceiving investors by "massive fraud" through 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 being barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for ten years. In June 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Holmes and former Theranos chief operating officer Ramesh Balwani on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for distributing blood tests with falsified results to consumers. A trial is set to begin in March 2021. 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. Holmes was in a clandestine romantic relationship with her chief operating officer, Ramesh Balwani. After the demise of Theranos, she married hotel heir Billy Evans. Holmes's career, the rise and dissolution of her company, and the subsequent fallout are the subject of a book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by the Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, and an HBO documentary feature film, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.

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