Connect with us

Published

on

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes on November 18, 2022 in San Jose, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will not go to prison this week, despite a judge’s order that she begin serving her 11-year sentence on Thursday.

Late Tuesday, Holmes’ attorneys appealed that ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Under the court’s rules, that means Holmes will remain free on bail for now.

Holmes, 39, has two children, the first of whom was born before her fraud trial in 2021. The second was born after her November sentencing.

A federal jury in San Jose, California, convicted Holmes last year on four counts of defrauding investors in her failed blood-testing company. In November, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila sentenced her to 11 years and three months in prison. Holmes’ attorneys asked that she be allowed to remain free on bail while she appeals her conviction, but earlier this month Davila denied that motion and ordered her to report to prison by April 27.

In their last-minute appeal, Holmes’ attorneys said Davila’s ruling contained “numerous, inexplicable errors,” including referring to “patient fraud counts” when Holmes was acquitted on the charges that she defrauded Theranos patients. They say she should be allowed to remain free while she appeals her conviction because the appeal is “likely to result in reversal.” The government has 10 days to respond to the motion.

Federal prosecutors have opposed Holmes’ efforts to remain free. In January, they argued Holmes was a flight risk, noting that she had booked a one-way flight to Mexico shortly before she was convicted. Davila agreed with defense lawyers that the plane ticket episode was merely an oversight, but he ruled that her appeal was unlikely to change the outcome of the case.

While Tuesday’s motion keeps Holmes out of prison for now, it may only be a brief reprieve. Holmes’ mentor and former boyfriend, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, convicted in a separate trial last year, also sought to remain free pending his appeal, and he appealed to the 9th Circuit when Davila denied his motion. But the appeals court turned down his request within three weeks. Last week, Balwani, 57, reported to a low-security federal prison in Los Angeles to begin serving his nearly 13-year sentence.

Holmes’ appeal of her conviction, filed last week, argues that Holmes could not have knowingly misrepresented her supposedly “revolutionary” blood-testing technology to investors because she genuinely believed the product worked.

“Highly credentialed Theranos scientists told Holmes in real time the technology worked. Outsiders who reviewed the technology said it worked. Theranos’ groundbreaking developments received many patents,” the appeal said.

Her attorneys argued that the government’s case “largely parroted the public narrative,” first laid out in a series of negative Wall Street Journal articles in 2015, that Holmes knowingly committed fraud.

The appeal challenges multiple rulings by Davila on evidence and witnesses, including allowing a former Theranos lab director to testify as an expert witness. This week, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers filed a brief in support of Holmes’ appeal.

The organization argued that the government abused the rules on expert testimony in Holmes’ case, and that it is part of a trend.

“This sleight of hand is, regrettably, common,” attorney Brian Goldman wrote. “The government has previously subverted the requirements of the federal rules, and blurred the distinction between expert and lay testimony.”

The government has until May 3 to respond to Holmes’ appeal of the conviction.

Continue Reading

Technology

AMD stock continues rally after OpenAI deal, now up 43% this week so far

Published

on

By

AMD stock continues rally after OpenAI deal, now up 43% this week so far

Lisa Su, chair and chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), during a Bloomberg Television interview in San Francisco, California, US, on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

AMD stock climbed 11% on Wednesday, continuing a massive run since OpenAI announced plans to buy billions of dollars of AI equipment from the chipmaker earlier this week.

On Monday, the ChatGPT maker entered into an agreement to potentially own 10% of AMD, based on its stock price and partnership milestones.

AMD now has a market cap of $380 billion after climbing 4% on Tuesday and 24% on Monday. Shares are up 43% so far this week, on pace for the best weekly gain since April 2016.

The partnership with OpenAI, which has historically been closely linked with Nvidia, has bolstered investor confidence that AMD will be a viable competitor to Nvidia in AI chips.

Read more CNBC tech news

AMD CEO Lisa Su told reporters on Monday that the deal was a “win-win” and that its AI chips were good enough to be used in “at-scale deployments,” or very large data centers like the kind OpenAI and cloud providers build.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday reacted to the deal on CNBC’s Squawk Box, saying it was “surprising.”

“It’s imaginative, it’s unique and surprising, considering they were so excited about their next-generation product,” Huang said. “I’m surprised that they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it. And so anyhow, it’s clever, I guess.”

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

hide content

AMD 5-day stock chart.

Continue Reading

Technology

Google adds limits to ‘Work from Anywhere’ policy that began during Covid

Published

on

By

Google adds limits to 'Work from Anywhere' policy that began during Covid

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, June 4, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google is continuing to put restrictions on remote work, this time with a popular policy called “Work from Anywhere” that was established during the Covid pandemic.

The policy has allowed employees to work from a location outside of their main office for up to four weeks per calendar year. According to internal documents viewed by CNBC, working remotely for even a single day will now count for a full week.

“Whether you log 1 WFA day or 5 WFA days in a given standard work week, 1 WFA week will be deducted from your WFA weekly balance,” according to a document that was circulated over the summer, shortly before the change went into effect.

Google isn’t altering its current hybrid schedule, which was also put in place during the pandemic, allowing employees to work from home two days a week. WFA days are distinct from that policy, giving staffers the flexibility to work remotely, but not at home.

“WFA weeks cannot be used to work from home or nearby,” the document says.

Google didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

Tech companies are increasingly forcing employees to spend more time in the office, with the peak of Covid now about five years in the past. Microsoft said last month that employees will be expected to work in an office three days a week starting next year, switching from a policy that allowed most of them to work from home 50% of the time or more with manager approval. Amazon went further, instructing corporate staffers to spend five days a week in the office.

Google began offering some U.S. full-time employees voluntary buyouts at the beginning of 2025, and has notified remote workers from several units their jobs would be considered for layoffs if they didn’t return to offices to work a hybrid schedule.

According to the latest changes, employees can’t work from a Google office in a separate state or country during their WFA time due to “legal and financial implications of cross border work.” If in a different location, employees may be required to work during the business hours that align with that time zone, the rules state.

The WFA update doesn’t apply to all Google staffers and may exclude data center workers, and those who are required to be in physical offices. Violations of the policy will result in disciplinary action or termination, the document says.

The issue came up at a recent all-hands meeting.

A top-rated question that was submitted on Google’s internal system described the update as “confusing.”

“Why does even one day of WFA count as a whole week, and can we reconsider the restriction on using WFA weeks to work from home?” the question said.

John Casey, Google’s vice president of performance and rewards, said at the meeting that WFA “was meant to meet Googlers where they were during the pandemic,” according to audio obtained by CNBC.

“The policy was always intended to be taken in increments of a week and not be used as a substitute for working from home in a regular hybrid work week,” Casey said.

WATCH: Google adds Gemini to Chrome for all users in push to bolster AI search

Google adds Gemini to Chrome for all users in push to bolster AI search

Continue Reading

Technology

Jensen Huang says Trump’s H-1B changes would’ve prevented his family from immigrating

Published

on

By

Jensen Huang says Trump's H-1B changes would've prevented his family from immigrating

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on H-1B visas: My family wouldn't have been able to afford the $100,000 fee

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that his family’s immigration to the U.S. “would not have been possible” with the Trump administration’s current policy.

President Donald Trump announced in September that employers would have to pay a $100,000 fee for each H-1B visa, a temporary worker visa granted to foreign professionals with specialized skills.

Huang, who was born in Taiwan and later moved Thailand, immigrated to the U.S. at nine years old with his brother. His parents joined them around two years later.

“I don’t think that my family would have been able to afford the $100,000 and and so the opportunity for my, my family and for me to be here … would not have been possible,” Huang told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Trump’s sudden price hike was a shock to the tech sector, which relies heavily on foreign talent, especially from India and China.

Read more CNBC tech news

Amazon was the top employer for H-1B holders in fiscal year 2025, sponsoring over 10,000 applicants according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Tech juggernauts Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Google were also among the top H-1B employers, with over 4,000 approvals each.

“Immigration is the foundation of the American dream,” Huang said, “this ideal that anyone can come to America and through hard work and some talent, be able to build a better future for yourself.”

Huang added that his own parents came to the U.S. so that his family could “enjoy the opportunities” and “this incredible country.”

The CEO confirmed that Nvidia, which currently sponsors 1,400 visas, would continue covering H-1B fees for immigrant employees. Huang said that he hopes to see some “enhancements” to the policy so that there’s “still some opportunities for serendipity to happen.”

While his own family’s journey would have been blocked by Trump’s immigration policy, Huang said Trump’s changes will still allow the U.S. “to continue to attract the world’s best talent.”

And other tech executives have expressed support for the changes, with Netflix‘s Reed Hastings calling the fee “a great solution” in a post on X.

“It will mean H1-B is used just for very high value jobs, which will mean no lottery needed, and more certainty for those jobs,” Hastings wrote.

In September, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told CNBC’s Jon Fortt that he also backed Trump’s changes.

“We need to get the smartest people in the country, and streamlining that process and also sort of outlining financial incentives seems good to me,” Altman said.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: Want to be part of almost everything Elon Musk is involved in

Continue Reading

Trending