Elizabeth Holmes plans to claim at trial ex-boyfriend and Theranos business partner abused her

Published

4 years ago

August 28, 2021

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Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former CEO of Theranos, arrives for motion hearing on Monday, Nov. 4, 2019, at the U.S. District Court House inside Robert F. Peckham Federal Building in San Jose, California.

Yichuan Cao | NurPhoto | Getty Images

In a bombshell revelation just days before her criminal fraud trial, defense attorneys for Elizabeth Holmes claim she’s suffered a “decade-long campaign of psychological abuse” from her former boyfriend and business partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.

“Balwani’s control included monitoring her calls, text messages, and emails; physical violence, such as throwing hard, sharp objects at her, restricting her sleep, monitoring her movements; and insisting that any success she achieved was because of him,” defense attorneys for former Theranos CEO Holmes wrote.

The revelation is contained in documents unsealed early Saturday morning by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila. Holmes met Balwani when she was 18 – he joined her blood-testing startup, Theranos, in 2009 as president and chief operating officer. The pair, who are each facing 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy, later admitted in deposition tapes that they never told investors of their relationship.

Both have pleaded not guilty and deny any wrongdoing in connection with what federal prosecutors call a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud investors, doctors and patients.

Attorneys for Holmes plan to “introduce evidence that Mr. Balwani verbally disparaged and withdrew ‘affection if she displeased him;’ controlled what she ate, how she dressed, and how much money she could spend, who she could interact with – essentially dominating her and erasing her capacity to make decisions,” according to the unsealed filings.

“Ms. Holmes’ allegations are deeply offensive to Mr. Balwani, devastating personally to him,” Jefferey Coopersmith, an attorney for Balwani, wrote in the filings.

The documents also answer the question of whether Holmes plans to testify. “Ms. Holmes is likely to testify herself to the reasons why she believed, relied on and deferred to Mr. Balwani,” her attorneys wrote.

The filings also reveal that Holmes plans to argue she suffers from mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, intimate-partner abuse syndrome, anxiety and depression due to her relationship with Balwani.

Balwani vehemently denied the allegations, citing them as a reason for his request for a separate trial, which was granted. Coopersmith writes that Holmes’ allegations “to establish her innocence would require him to defend against not only the government’s case, but to defend against her allegations as well because her allegations are so inflammatory that they cannot be left unrebutted before the jury.”

Lawyers for Holmes also asked to separate their trials, saying she “cannot be near him without suffering physical distress.”

“She argues that if she is tried together with Mr. Balwani, she will likely suffer stress and physical ailments that will manifest visually, such that she will not appear to the jury in her true sense.”

In 2020, Davila agreed that they would be tried separately. The records were unsealed in response to a motion by publisher Dow Jones, a move that defense attorneys for Holmes and Balwani tried to block until after jury selection.

Separating the trials is a strategy many legal analysts have said was an important ruling for Holmes.

“What it allows a defendant to do is to point, at trial, at the empty chair,” Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and NBC News legal analyst, said. “To tell the jury that’s the real bad guy here, it was all him, and have the jury find some sympathy with that story and acquit Elizabeth Holmes.”

McQuade said this can go both ways, adding “of course at his trial where you have a different jury trying the case, he could do the same thing to her. Point to her empty chair and say it wasn’t Sunny, it was Elizabeth.”

Attorneys for Holmes and Balwani did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Jury selection for Holmes’ trial begins on Tuesday.

—CNBC’s Scott Cohn contributed to this report.

Technology

More demand than supply gives companies an edge, Jim Cramer says

Published

2 hours ago

October 24, 2025

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More demand than supply gives companies an edge, Jim Cramer says

“Supply constrained,” are the two of the most important words CNBC’s Jim Cramer said he’s heard so far during earnings season and explained why this dynamic is favorable for companies.

“When you’re supplied constrained, you have the ability to raise prices, and that’s the holy grail in any industry,” he said.

Intel‘s strong earnings results were in part because of more demand than supply, Cramer suggested. He noted that the company’s CFO, David Zinsner, said the semiconductor maker is supply constrained for a number of products, and that “industry supply has tightened materially.”

Along with Intel, other tech names that are also supply constrained and performing well on the market include Micron, AMD and Nvidia, Cramer continued.

These companies don’t have enough product in part because the storage needs of artificial intelligence are incredible high, Cramer said. He added that he thinks demand has overwhelmed supply because semiconductor capital equipment companies didn’t manufacture enough of their own machines as they simply didn’t anticipate such a volume of orders.

Outside of tech, Cramer said he thinks airplane maker Boeing and energy company GE Vernova are also supply constrained, adding that he thinks the former will say it’s short on most of its planes when it reports earnings next week. GE Vernova is supply constrained with its power equipment, like turbines that burn natural gas, he continued, which is the primary energy source for the ever-growing crop of data centers.

GE Vernova and Boeing are also set to be winners because they make big-ticket items that other countries can buy from the U.S. to help close the trade deficit, Cramer added.

“In the end, we have more demand than supply in a host of industries and that’s the ticket for good stock performance,” he said. “I don’t see that changing any time soon.”

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Technology

3 takeaways from Intel earnings: Cash flow, foundry progress and hardware surprise

Published

8 hours ago

October 24, 2025

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3 takeaways from Intel earnings: Cash flow, foundry progress and hardware surprise

Wall Street remains skeptical on Intel despite its return to profitability

Intel snapped a losing streak of six straight quarterly losses and returned to profitability in the third quarter.

In its first earnings report since the Trump administration acquired a 10% stake in the company, the U.S. chipmaker posted strong revenue, noting robust demand for chips that it expects to continue into 2026.

Client computing revenue, which includes chips for PCs and laptops, grew 5% year over year, benefiting from PC market stabilization and artificial intelligence PC prospects.

CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a call with analysts Thursday that artificial intelligence “is a strong foundation for sustainable long-term growth as we execute.”

The chip strength and demand were bright spots, but there were areas of concern as well, with the company’s foundry business still needing a big break.

Here are three takeaways from the chipmaker’s Q3 report:

Cash flow

“We significantly improved our cash position and liquidity in Q3, a key focus for me since becoming CEO in March,” Tan said on a call with analysts Thursday.

Intel landed an $8.9 billion investment from the U.S. government in August, along with $2 billion from Softbank, but has not yet received the $5 billion tied to a deal with Nvidia. The company expects that deal to close by the end of Q4.

With all of those transactions completed, plus the Altera sale, Intel will have $35 billion in cash on hand, CFO David Zinser told CNBC.

The U.S. government is the company’s biggest shareholder, and Intel stock is up more than 50% since Aug. 22, when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced the deal.

“Like any shareholder, we have to keep in touch with them,” Zinser said of the U.S. stake. “We don’t tell them how the numbers are going before the quarter. We generally talk to them like Fidelity,” another Intel shareholder.

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

Intel 3-month stock chart.

Foundry

The firm’s foundry remains a work in progress.

Revenue fell 2% over the year before, and it has yet to land a major customer.

Intel now has two fabs running 18A nodes, which are designed for AI and high-performance computing applications.

“We are making steady progress on Intel 18A,” Tan said of its latest chip technology. “We are on track to bring Panther Lake to market this year.”

Zinser said the more advanced 14A nodes won’t be put in supply until the company has “real firm demand.”

Old stuff still selling

Zinser said the company’s older chipmaking processes, or nodes, have continued to do well, “and that was probably the part that was more unexpected.”

Zinser said the chipmaker met some of the central processing unit (CPU) demand with inventory on hand, but they will be behind in Q1, “probably Q2 and maybe in Q3.”

The supply crunch has been with older Intel 10 and 7 manufacturing technologies.

Many customers are opting for less advanced hardware to refresh their operating systems, demonstrating enterprises aren’t waiting for cutting-edge chips when proven technology gets the job done.