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Billy Evans, partner of jailed Theranos founder, starts new company.
The startup, Haemanthus, focuses on blood, saliva, and urine testing.
It aims to raise over $50 million for its diagnostics technology.
Jailed Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ partner is starting a new blood-testing company. Billy Evans, who shares two children with Holmes, is attempting to raise money for the company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics”, having a “radically new approach to health testing”, according to a report in The New York Times.
The startup’s core idea sounds similar to Theranos, where Ms Holmes duped investors by falsely claiming to have developed ‘revolutionary’ blood-testing methods that could use small volumes of blood, such as from a fingerprick, for multiple diagnostic examinations.
Called Haemanthus, Mr Evans’ startup claims to have developed a machine that uses lasers to analyse blood, saliva, and urine samples to detect cancer and infections. Unsurprisingly, the device’s photo bears an uncanny resemblance to Theranos’ infamous blood-testing machine, known as the Edison or miniLab.
The company is planning to start with pet health before expanding to humans, and it seeks to raise more than $50 million. Despite being imprisoned, Holmes has been providing advice to her partner on the startup.
James W Breyer, a well-known venture capitalist and early investor in Facebook, told the publication that he refused to put in money, having done so on two occasions with Theranos in the past.
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Where is Elizabeth Holmes?
Holmes is currently incarcerated at the Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Bryan, Texas, after being sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding investors in 2023. Over the course of her nearly four-month criminal trial, Holmes insisted she did not commit any crimes, despite evidence presented by the government and witness testimony suggesting otherwise.
Once a Silicon Valley star, Holmes had a meteoric rise and was on the covers of business magazines that hailed her as the next Steve Jobs, owing to her similar dressing style to the Apple founder. Her deception was persuasive enough to draw in sophisticated investors like software magnate Larry Ellison, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family behind Walmart.