Elizabeth Holmes: How Theranos founder went from billionaire darling of Silicon Valley to the brink of prison
“Don’t worry about the future, we’re in good hands.”
So said former US president Bill Clinton in 2015, as he introduced Elizabeth Holmes to an adoring New York crowd.
It seemed an uncontroversial statement at the time, as he hailed the achievements of a woman who had become America’s youngest self-made female billionaire after taking Silicon Valley by storm.
A hub for the world’s biggest tech companies, the only thing more synonymous with this infamous stretch of northern California than scientific breakthroughs and innovative gadgets were the rich white men who were invariably behind them – turtleneck jumpers and smart trouser-sneaker combos in tow.
Bill Clinton and Elizabeth Holmes at the Clinton Global Initiative’s 2015 meeting in New York
Holmes – a high school computer whizz turned Harvard dropout – was a bona fide gatecrasher, her stunning rise to the cover of Forbes magazine powered by her founding health technology firm Theranos and its rapid ascent to a peak valuation of $9bn. Look back on what it was promising to deliver, and it’s easy to see why.
Revolutionary blood tests were at the heart of its pitch, ones which could be performed at phenomenal speed with merely a small drop required – and no needles.
Holmes’s catchphrase became “change the world”, such were her assertions that the equipment her company had developed could test for dozens of diseases in one fell swoop.
She insisted it would change healthcare in the US, not just by speeding up and streamlining trips to the doctor, but by eventually rendering such visits obsolete by selling the gizmos in stores.
It took more than a decade for such claims to be exposed as the stuff of science-fiction, but Holmes’s shameless willingness to talk the talk regardless helped her become one of the darlings of Silicon Valley, raising hundreds of millions from investors and venture capitalists.
As Theranos grew, her public image was crafted to perfection to make her the perfect face of one of America’s most exciting companies, famously adopting the aforementioned turtlenecks from her idol Steve Jobs, the late Apple founder, and speaking in a strikingly deep voice which added extra gravitas to her every word.
Fame isn’t for everyone, but for Holmes it seemed elementary.
Nothing, it seemed, could go wrong. Until it did. Big time.
Theranos reached a value of $9bn
How the lie was exposed
Holmes’s empire began to unravel upon the publication of a bombshell expose by The Wall Street Journal, which reported that Theranos’s technology was profoundly flawed.
The devices used to collect people’s blood, which the firm dubbed “nanotainers”, were said to be so far off the mark that Theranos had in fact been using other companies’ equipment to carry out blood tests in its laboratories.
The most distressing piece of the Journal’s report was that the company’s ex-chief scientist, Briton Ian Gibbons, had tried to take his own life after telling his wife the tech did not work. He died shortly after from liver failure.
The stories emerged just a month after Holmes had shared the stage with Bill Clinton.
Silicon Valley is home to some of the biggest names in tech
As described by Sky’s Ian King when Theranos went bust in 2018, three years after the Journal’s report, key to the company keeping the wool fixed firmly over the public’s eyes until then had been an almost cult-like culture among its executives and staff, and one of extreme secrecy.
Neither are unique to Silicon Valley – some of the big tech personalties who have emerged over the years remain an odd focus of worship in some corners of the internet – but rarely have they combined to such destructive effect.
The journalist who broke the story, John Carreyrou, has since written a book on the scandal called Bad Blood, which stands to be turned into a feature film. There’s perhaps a cruel irony that it’s being produced by Apple, the company whose late co-founder was a source of such inspiration for Holmes.
Her rise and fall also inspired a hit podcast series called The Dropout, and a subsequent Hulu series of the same name starring Amanda Seyfried.
The show presents Holmes as a brave, smart, single-minded young woman determined to succeed, and she is initially easy to root for. As Apple designer Ana Arriola tells Holmes in a scene when she attempts to recruit her following the launch of the first iPhone: “Honestly, it’s just really exciting to me that you’re a young female CEO, instead of a cocky little boy in a sweatshirt.”
But Holmes’s goal of becoming a wealthy star of the biotech scene quickly overcomes all other instincts – including a willingness to tell the truth.
It’s a trait that left some staff feeling deeply uneasy, not just Gibbons and Arriola, who describes her time at Theranos on her LinkedIn page as “altruism through corrupt unethical science-fiction”.
Amanda Seyfried as Holmes in The Dropout: Pic Disney+
How a life unravelled
Carreyrou’s revelations, which Holmes has admitted trying to silence, sparked investigations by medical and financial regulators in the US. In a development which would once have been unthinkable, the now 34-year-old was facing criminal charges in 2018.
She and the president of Theranos, ex-lover Romesh Balwani (who she has since accused of sexual assault), were accused of engaging “in a multi-million-dollar scheme to defraud investors, a separate scheme to defraud doctors and patients”, and each faced two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud.
Former Theranos president Ramesh Balwani
Among those defrauded investors were the likes of Rupert Murdoch and the American pharmacy giant Walgreens, while similarly big names had been attracted to Theranos’s board of directors.
Among them were former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, and an ex-director of the US Centers for Disease Control.
All of them had been hoodwinked by Holmes, who had founded Theranos aged just 18 and quickly learned how to tell her backers exactly what they wanted – and she needed them – to hear.
As Eric Jackson, a startup founder and author of The PayPal Wars, put it to Sky News: “There is almost endemic to the system a need to, I don’t want to say exaggerate, but to tell a narrative that’s compelling to investors. At a certain point hype does have to be in line with credibility, if not you’re in an instance of good old-fashioned fraud.”
Whether it was a matter of delusion, falling victim to the treacherous “fake it ’til you make it” culture that permeates American startups, or something more sinister, Holmes maintained during her trial that she initially believed her company’s purportedly revolutionary blood tests were real.
“I wanted to convey the impact the company could make for people and for health care,” she told the court of her meetings with investors.
To prosecutors, such assertions were the consequence of a woman who was “out of time and out of money”.
Having launched her company by repurposing family funds meant for her Harvard degree, taking it mainstream meant doing whatever it took to attract her big time investors and venture capitalists.
The once-enamoured former US secretary of defence Jim Mattis, who joined the company board, told the trial: “There just came a point when I didn’t know what to believe about Theranos any more.”
Holmes arrives for a hearing in San Jose in 2019
‘She chose lies when we needed truth’
Holmes’s sentencing on Friday comes after she was convicted of fraud earlier this year, her years-long scam having failed to move the jury as it had done her backers.
After a case which gripped the world, just as her rise to fame had done, US federal prosecutors want the judge to jail her for 15 years, a term considered appropriate for “one of the most substantial white collar offences Silicon Valley or any other district has seen”.
Balwani has been left waiting until next month for his sentencing, having also been convicted of multiple fraud counts during a separate trial.
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In a 46-page brief last week, assistant US attorney Robert S Leach wrote of Holmes: “She repeatedly chose lies, hype, and the prospect of billions of dollars over patient safety and fair dealing with investors.
“Elizabeth Holmes’ crimes were not failing, they were lying – lying in the most serious context, where everyone needed her to tell the truth.”
A counter document from Holmes’s attorneys, totalling 82 pages, insisted her reputation had been permanently and unfairly destroyed, given it had turned her into a “caricature to be mocked and vilified”.
They are appealing for a sentence of no more than 18 months.
More than 130 friends, family, former investors and employees have also submitted letters to the judge, Edward Davila of San Jose, California, to appeal for leniency.
Senator Cory Booker used his to hail Holmes, still only 38, as someone who “can, despite mistakes, make the world a better place”.
Whether that’s true or not, she won’t be able to from behind bars.
US
Blue Origin sends NASA spacecraft to Mars and lands booster for first time – heating up race with Elon Musk’s SpaceX
Blue Origin has launched its huge New Glenn rocket with two spacecraft on board destined for Mars, as the firm makes a major step forward in its race against Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Crowds cheered at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as they watched liftoff, which had been stalled for four days by bad weather, and then on Thursday suffered two further delays.
Blue Origin latest: Successful launch after last-minute delay
On board were two identical Mars orbiters, named Escapade, which are now heading to the Red Planet and due to arrive in 2027.
But the firm’s big success was the recovery of the rocket’s reusable first-stage booster, a critical development in the space race with SpaceX. Mr Musk posted his congratulations on X.
On the launchpad, ready for liftoff. Pic: Blue Origin
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket launching from Florida on Thursday. Pic: Reuters
Pic: Reuters
It is only the second flight for this new type of rocket, from the company owned by Amazon tycoon, Jeff Bezos.
The rocket headed out over the Atlantic, where it split into its two stages.
The inaugural test flight in January delivered a prototype satellite into orbit, but failed to land the booster stage.
Relief after booster recovery
This time, staff cheered wildly as the booster landed upright on its platform 375 miles (600km) offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. The company had never managed the feat before with a rocket so large.
Blue Origin staff cheering wildly at their successful touchdown
Rockets fired on the booster to slow it down. Pics: Blue Origin
The booster stage safely landed on a platform 375 miles (600km) offshore in the Atlantic Ocean
The recovery of the booster is an essential step to recycle and slash costs. The feat has already been achieved with such large rockets by SpaceX.
Blue Origin had achieved this with its much smaller models, but if it wants to consistently run science-scale missions for NASA this is an important step.
The huge New Glenn rocket made it safely through Earth’s atmosphere. Pics: Blue Origin
The rocket’s upper stage deployed the two Mars orbiters in space. Pics: Blue Origin
The rocket, named after American astronaut John Glenn, weighs roughly the same as 20 trucks. It can put into space a payload of 45 metric tonnes.
At 98m tall and 7m wide, it is larger than most rockets, but not as big as SpaceX’s Starship nor the Saturn Vs which sent humans to the moon.
Blue and Gold to visit Red Planet
Meanwhile, NASA’s Escapade (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission comprises two identical orbiting spacecraft named Blue and Gold.
The probes intend to study how solar wind interacts with Mars’s magnetic environment and how this impacts the planet’s atmospheric escape.
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This matters because it will help scientists understand Mars’s climate and protect future crews intending to reach the Red Planet.
This was Blue Origin’s third attempt to launch, with the first on Sunday scrapped because of clouds and the threat of lightning strikes.
Wednesday’s attempt was also postponed as a powerful “cannibal storm” hit Earth.
US
Wife of British journalist held by US immigration issues warning to UK fans travelling to World Cup
The wife of British journalist Sami Hamdi, who was held for more than a fortnight by US immigration, has issued a stark warning to football fans travelling to the 2026 World Cup about the risk of being detained.
Mr Hamdi, who returned to the UK on Thursday, was initially detained at San Francisco International Airport on 26 October.
US officials revoked his visa without warning while on a speaking tour, during which he criticised Israel’s actions in Gaza.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said the tour was cancelled due to security rules and that he was in the country illegally.
Sitting alongside him in an interview for Sky’s The World With Yalda Hakim, Soumaya Hamdi explained her concerns about British people travelling to the US.
Soumaya Hamdi has issued a warning to British football fans ‘who value their freedom of speech’
“I would say to British citizens who value their freedom of speech to be very careful, because you got the World Cup in the United States coming up next year.
“If this could happen to Sami on a valid visa, a British citizen, a registered journalist, then it could very well happen again.”
Ms Hamdi added she was not happy about how the UK government had handled their case.
“The assistance that we received from the British government… was really very disappointing.
“I think this is really very concerning that the government is not taking more serious action with regards to our closest ally.”
Speaking about his arrest, Mr Hamdi said it had been “quite an aggressive experience”.
“They escorted me outside of the airport, there was this black car, the kind of things you see in the movies,” he said.
“When I asked them ‘Can I call my family to let them know I’m OK?’, a lady from behind grabs me, pushes me on the car, and says, ‘All right, that’s enough. You’re under arrest’.”
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He added that, while in detention, he felt there was an attempt to wear him down by restricting access to justice.
“You felt, like, with ICE, it’s a battle of wills. Based on the merits of the case, they can’t actually win, but what they do is they keep delaying you and delaying until you’re just desperate to go home.”
Mr Hamdi, who is Muslim and lives in London, insisted he had complied with all visa conditions and alleged the move was linked to his advocacy for Gaza.
According to Mr Hamdi’s legal team, he accepted an offer to leave the US voluntarily after being charged with visa overstay.
His family announced on Monday the US government had agreed to free him and confirmed on Thursday morning he was on a flight home.
Discussing his treatment while in detention, Mr Hamdi said he noticed a distinct change when news outlets like Sky News became aware of his case.
“They throw you in a cell, you sleep in the foot cuffs. They kept me there with 24 hours until my legs were swollen. When I told the guards, ‘Look, my legs are swollen, visibly swollen’, the guards simply ignored it.
“They only started treating me better when everybody at Sky News and the other media started raising their voices.”
The Trump administration has pursued a sweeping immigration crackdown this year, revoking visas for people accused of supporting terrorism and deporting foreign nationals who have voiced support for Palestinians.
After Mr Hamdi’s arrest, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Homeland Security said his visa had been revoked as “those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country”.
But he told Sky News he strongly disputed the reason for his detention. “On the charge sheet… there was no mention of anything related to terrorism or anything related to what they were saying online,” he said.
“They knew no evidence existed of any of the accusations they were making. And in the end, the deal was about face-saving. I was happy to go home.
“Of course, they get to say that Sami Hamdi ended up leaving America, the case gets closed, and it worked out for both of us.”
The US federal government’s longest-ever shutdown has come to an end after Donald Trump signed off a congressional vote with his presidential approval.
But the president was in no mood to field questions from the media after hailing the long-awaited funding bill, which he signed just hours after thousands of files related to Jeffrey Epstein – in which he was referenced – were released.
As it happened: Trump ends shutdown after Epstein files released
Mr Trump has always denied any wrongdoing in relation to the deceased billionaire paedophile, and said in a Truth Social post after their release that the “Jeffrey Epstein hoax” is a “trap” set by Democrats.
His appearance in the Oval Office came after the House of Representatives voted to reopen the government, after the Senate – the upper chamber of Congress – reached a deal on Monday.
The breakthrough came when a handful of Democrat senators rebuffed their party’s leadership – who’d spent weeks pushing for guarantees on healthcare subsidies – and teamed up with Republicans.
The deal then went to the president, who signed it into law.
“It’s a great day,” he declared, as he blamed Democrats for the 43-day shutdown that left federal workers without pay, food aid undelivered, air travel disrupted, and museums closed.
But the big media moment from behind the historic White House Resolute desk was short and sweet – with Mr Trump, unusually, taking no questions from journalists.
The bill will see the federal government funded until 30 January. Pic: AP
What’s in the latest Epstein files?
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee initially published several emails which they said “raises questions about Trump and Epstein’s relationship, Trump’s knowledge of Epstein’s crimes” and the president’s relationship to Epstein’s victims.
White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the “selectively leaked emails” were an attempt to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump”. He has consistently denied any involvement or knowledge about Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.
It prompted Republicans to retaliate by releasing more than 20,000 pages from Epstein’s files and accusing Democrats of “cherry-picking” their documents.
Read more: What Epstein emails say about Trump
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The Epstein files: The main things you need to know
Epstein took his own life in prison in 2019 following a conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, for which he was registered as a sex offender. He was awaiting a trial for sex trafficking charges.
In his Truth Social post, Mr Trump said the release of the latest files were a “deflection” from the shutdown.
The shutdown, which started on 1 October, has disrupted the lives of millions of Americans as all non-essential parts of government have been frozen.
It was the first shutdown in almost seven years.
As he put pen to paper, the president accused the Democrats of an “extortion” attempt over their push for healthcare subsidies – provided under the Affordable Care Act brought in by Barack Obama – to be extended.
“Republicans never wanted a shutdown,” he said.
“It’s cost the country $1.5trn,” he added.
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