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Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes leaves after a hearing at a federal court in San Jose, California, July 17, 2019.
Stephen Lam | Reuters

Nearly a decade ago, Elizabeth Holmes was proclaimed the golden girl of Silicon Valley, and briefly crowned America’s youngest female self-made billionaire.

This week, she’ll walk into a San Jose federal courthouse with a very different image: a defendant charged accused of fraud. 

Federal prosecutors in the Northern District of California have accused Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, former Theranos president and for a time her romantic partner, of defrauding investors and patients. They each face two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 10 counts of wire fraud. Holmes and Balwani, who will be tried separately, pleaded not guilty.

Jury selection in Holmes’ trial will begin Tuesday and is expected to take at least two days, a process that typically takes less than a day in lower-profile cases. Opening statements are scheduled for Sept. 8 and the trial is expected to last 13 weeks.

If convicted, Holmes could face 20 years in prison. Prosecutors say Holmes not only swindled investors of hundreds of millions of dollars, but she also put thousands of lives at risk.

The rise and fall of Theranos

Holmes’ saga began when she had a vision of running hundreds of laboratory tests with just a finger prick of blood. She dropped out of Stanford at age 19 to start Theranos. The idea was to make blood tests cheaper, convenient and accessible to consumers.

The company struck partnerships with Walgreens and the grocery chain Safeway. Her board of directors included luminaries such as former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and the late George Shultz and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

But Holmes’ vision turned upside down in 2015 after Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou published a series of damning reports exposing the shortcomings and inaccuracies of Theranos’ technology.

Patients were given inaccurate test results relating to conditions such as HIV, cancer and miscarriages.

“She commercialized a medical product that she knew did not work, her machine only did a handful of tests that did not do them well at all,” Carreyrou said in an interview with CNBC last week.

In 2018, Holmes and Balwani were charged with “massive fraud” by the Securities and Exchange Commission. That led to Theranos being dissolved and Holmes settling with the SEC. She agreed to pay $500,000 without admitting or denying the charges. Balwani intends to fight the SEC charges.

The investors

Holmes once had some of the most powerful and wealthiest venture capitalists in America behind her healthcare start-up Theranos.

Investors such as media mogul Rupert Murdoch, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Walton family of Walmart fame, the Cox family, Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Mexican investor Carlos Slim became so enchanted with her they poured millions into Theranos.

Some of those investors are expected to testify in Holmes’ trial. All of the major investors, who doled out $700 million over the course of a decade, did not respond to CNBC’s request for a comment. Prosecutors allege the investors were swayed by exaggerations and misrepresentations of the blood-testing technology.

“When a deal turns into this, you don’t want to be on that list of investors anymore,” said Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Shares ETFs and a judge on CNBC’s “Money Court.”

O’Leary, who said about 20% of his investments have failed, didn’t mince words when asked about the fallout from Theranos investors.

“You can understand how embarrassing it is to get a zero like that,” O’Leary said. “Clearly means you didn’t do your due diligence which all investors know is a mistake. When there’s a really hot deal, what suffers immediately is the diligence process. You’re just questioning if you can get into the deal.”

According to the indictment, prosecutors say there were six wire transfers from unnamed investors that they allege were the result of fraudulent claims about what they were getting in return.

“It’s going to be highly scrutinized and the investors will be dragged back into the press again and shamed for it,” O’Leary said. “I can guarantee you this, it will change nothing. When this is over whatever happens, it will happen again. I guarantee nothing changes in regards to investment in Silicon Valley.”

A Silicon Valley tale

Instead of being an example of Silicon Valley’s best, Theranos turned into a black eye for start-ups.

One of Holmes’ defense strategies may be to blame the so-called “fake it ’til you make it” motto of Silicon Valley. Earlier this year, the judge ruled her defense team can lean on the hype and exaggeration of start-up founders to explain Holmes’ own actions. 

“It’s going to be a wake-up call for venture capitalists and young entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley,” Carreyrou said. “If you go too far, if you push the envelope and hype and exaggerate to the point of lying, it becomes securities fraud.”

However, if she’s found not guilty, some say it could encourage risk taking.

“It’s going to a take guilty verdict to course correct and even a guilty verdict in this case might not be enough,” Carreyrou said.

Mental health defense

Explosive new court documents unsealed just days before jury selection shed light on how Holmes’ lawyers might mount a mental health defense. In the filings, Holmes claims she was the victim of “a decade-long” abuse by Balwani, whom she met when she was 18.

The documents reveal she plans to claim he psychologically, emotionally and sexually abused her. According to one filing, Holmes accused Balwani of throwing sharp objects at her, controlling what she ate, when she slept, how she dressed and monitoring her calls and text messages. Balwani denied the claims.

The court filings also revealed Holmes plans to take the stand in her own defense, a move many legal experts say is a risky one.

“It’s an uphill battle: Balwani may have exercised influence on her, due to his age or prior successes,” said Danny Cevallos, an NBC News legal analyst. “But will she convince a jury that his influence excused her own conduct?”

Today, with her trial repeatedly delayed she’s now the mother of a newborn. Holmes, who once was a ubiquitous presence in the media, stays silent and ignores reporters’ questions every time she enters and exits the courthouse.

That will all change if she does indeed take the stand to finally tell her side of the story.

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.

Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.

S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.

Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.

Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.

While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.

DoorDash was the latest tech company to join during the last rebalancing in March. Cloud software vendor Workday was added in December, and that was preceded earlier in 2024 with the additions of Palantir, Dell, CrowdStrike, GoDaddy and Super Micro Computer.

Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.

New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

CNBC: Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

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Ether and related stocks gain amid the latest crypto craze: Tokenization

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Ether and related stocks gain amid the latest crypto craze: Tokenization

A representation of cryptocurrency Ethereum is placed on a PC motherboard in this illustration taken on June 16, 2023.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Stocks tied to the price of ether, better known as ETH, were higher on Wednesday, reflecting renewed enthusiasm for the crypto asset amid a surge of interest in stablecoins and tokenization.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a bitcoin miner that announced plans this week to make ETH its primary treasury reserve asset, jumped about 20%. It’s gained more than 1,000% since the announcement. Betting platform SharpLink Gaming, which has also initiated an ETH treasury strategy, added more than 11%. Bit Digital, which last week exited bitcoin mining to focus on its ETH treasury and staking plans, jumped more than 6%.

“We’re finally at the point where real use cases are emerging, and stablecoins have been the first version of that at scale but they’re going to open the door to a much bigger story around tokenizing other assets and using digital assets in new ways,” Devin Ryan, head of financial technology research at Citizens.

On Tuesday, as bitcoin ETFs snapped a 15-day streak of inflows, ether ETFs saw $40 million in inflows led by BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust. ETH ETFs came back to life in June after much concern that they were becoming zombie funds.

The price of the coin itself was last higher by 5%, according to Coin Metrics, though it’s still down 24% this year.

Ethereum has been struggling with an identity crisis fueled by uncertainty about the network’s value proposition, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana. Market volatility, driven by geopolitical uncertainty this year, has not helped.

The Ethereum network’s smart contracts capability makes it a prominent platform for the tokenization of traditional assets, which includes U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins. Fundstrat’s Tom Lee this week called Ethereum “the backbone and architecture” of stablecoins. Both Tether (USDT) and Circle‘s USD Coin (USDC) are issued on the network.

Fundstrat's Tom Lee on being named chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies

BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund (known as BUIDL, which stands for USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) also launched on Ethereum last year before expanding to other blockchain networks.

Tokenization is the process of issuing digital representations on a blockchain network of publicly traded securities, real world assets or any other form of value. Holders of tokenized assets don’t have outright ownership of the assets themselves.

The latest wave of interest in ETH-related assets follows an announcement by Robinhood this week that it will enable trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs across Europe, after a groundswell of interest in stablecoins throughout June following Circle’s IPO and the Senate passage of its proposed stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act.

Ether, which turns 10 years old at the end of July, is sitting about 75% off its all-time high.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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China’s Honor launches new challenge to Samsung with thin foldable smartphone and a big battery

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China's Honor launches new challenge to Samsung with thin foldable smartphone and a big battery

Honor launched the Honor Magic V5 on Wednesday July 2, as it looks to challenge Samsung in the foldable space.

Honor

Honor on Wednesday touted the slimness and battery capacity of its newly launched thin foldable phone, as it lays down a fresh challenge to market leader Samsung.

The Honor Magic V5 goes will initially go on sale in China, but the Chinese tech firm will likely bring the device to international markets later this year.

The company, which spun off from Chinese tech giant Huawei in 2020, is looking to stand out from rivals with key features of the Magic V5, like artificial intelligence, battery and size.

Honor said the Magic V5 is 8.8 mm to 9mm when folded, depending on the color choice. The phone’s predecessor, the Magic V3 — Honor skipped the Magic V4 name — was 9.2 mm when folded. Honor said the Magic V5 weighs 217 grams to 222 grams, again, depending on the color model. The previous version was 226 grams.

In China, Honor will launch a special 1 terabyte storage size version of the Magic V5, which it says will have a battery capacity of more than 6000 milliampere-hour — among the highest for foldable phones.

Honor has tried hard to tout these features, as competition in foldables ramps up, even as these types of devices have a very small share of the overall smartphone market.

Honor vs. Samsung

Foldables represented less than 2% of the overall smartphone market in 2024, according to International Data Corporation. Samsung was the biggest player with 34% market share followed by Huawei with just under 24%, IDC added. Honor took the fourth spot with a nearly 11% share.

Honor is looking to get a head start on Samsung, which has its own foldable launch next week on July 9.

Francisco Jeronimo, a vice president at the International Data Corporation, said the Magic V5 is a strong offering from Honor.

“This is the dream foldable smartphone that any user who is interested in this category will think of,” Jeronimo told CNBC, pointing to features such as the battery.

“This phone continues to push the bar forward, and it will challenge Samsung as they are about to launch their seventh generation of foldable phones,” he added.

The thinness of a foldable phone has become a battleground for smartphone makers to appeal to consumers who want the large screen size the device has to offer without extra weight.

At its event next week, Samsung is expected to release a foldable that is thinner than its predecessor and could come close to challenging Honor’s offering by way of size, analysts said. If that happens, then Honor will be facing more competition, especially against Samsung, which has a bigger global footprint.

“The biggest challenge for Honor is the brand equity and distribution reach vs Samsung, where the Korean vendor has the edge,” Neil Shah, co-founder of Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

Honor’s push into international markets beyond China is still fairly young, with the company looking to build up its brand.

“Further, if Samsung catches up with a thinner form-factor in upcoming iterations, as it has been the real pioneer in foldables with its vertical integration expertise from displays to batteries, the differentiating factor might narrow for Honor,” Shah added.

Vertical integration refers to when a company owns several parts of a product’s supply chain. Samsung has a display and battery business which provides the components for its foldables.

Honor talks up AI

Smartphone players, including Honor, have also looked to stand out via the AI features available on their device.

In March, Honor pledged a $10 billion investment in AI over the next five years, with part of that going toward the development of next-generation agents that are seen as more advanced personal assistants.

Honor said its AI assistant Yoyo can interact with other AI models, such as those created by DeepSeek and Alibaba in China, to create presentation decks.

The company also flagged its AI agent can hail a taxi ride across multiple apps in China, automatically accepting the quickest ride to arrive? and cancelling the rest.

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