Technology

No prison yet for Elizabeth Holmes following last-ditch appeal

Published

2 years ago

April 26, 2023

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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. 9^th 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 9^th 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.

Technology

Mark Zuckerberg says Meta AI has 1 billion monthly active users

Published

41 mins ago

May 28, 2025

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Mark Zuckerberg says Meta AI has 1 billion monthly active users

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta’s AI assistant now has 1 billion monthly active users across the company’s family of apps, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.

The “focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI with an emphasis on personalization, voice conversations and entertainment,” Zuckerberg said.

The artificial intelligent assistant’s 1 billion milestone comes after the company in April released a standalone app for the tool.

The plan is for Meta to keep growing the product before building a business around it, Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. As Meta AI improves overtime, Zuckerberg said “there will be opportunities to either insert paid recommendations” or offer “a subscription service so that people can pay to use more compute.”

In February, CNBC reported that Meta was planning to debut a standalone Meta AI app during the second quarter and test a paid-subscription service akin to rival chat apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

“It may seem kind of funny that a billion monthly actives doesn’t seem like it’s at scale for us, but that’s where we’re at,” Zuckerberg told shareholders.

During the Meta shareholder meeting, investors voted on 14 different items related to the company’s business, nine of which were shareholder proposals covering topics such as child safety, greenhouse gas emissions and a proposed bitcoin treasury assessment.

Shareholder proposal 8, for example, was submitted by JLens, which is an investment advisor and affiliate of the Anti-Defamation League, and called for Meta to prepare an annual report detailing and addressing hate content, including antisemitism, on its services following January policy changes that relaxed content-moderation guidelines.

Early voting results on Wednesday showed the proposals that Meta’s board did not recommend were unlikely to pass, including one calling for the company to end its dual-class share structure, which gives Zuckerberg significant voting power. Meanwhile, the voting items that the board favored, including those pertaining to approving the company’s board of director nominees and an equity incentive plan, were likely to pass, based on the preliminary results.

Meta said final polling results will be released within four business days on the company’s website and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Technology

Salesforce turns in strong results and optimistic forecast

Published

1 hour ago

May 28, 2025

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Salesforce turns in strong results and optimistic forecast

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff participates in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2025.

Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Salesforce shares were volatile in extended trading on Wednesday after the sales and customer service software maker reported upbeat fiscal first-quarter results and guidance.

Here’s how the company performed relative to LSEG consensus:

Earnings per share: $2.58 adjusted vs. 2.54 expected
Revenue: $9.83 billion vs. $9.75 billion expected

Salesforce’s revenue grew 7.6% year over year in the quarter, which ended on April 30, according to a statement. Net income of $1.54 billion, or $1.59 per share, was basically flat compared with $1.53 billion, or $1.56 per share, a year ago.

President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. in early April. Co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff sounded positive about the company’s results for the quarter anyway, pointing to its plan, announced on Tuesday, to buy data management company Informatica for $8 billion.

It would be Salesforce’s priciest acquisition since the $27.1 billion Slack deal in 2021. Slack marked the top end of the buyouts Salesforce had made under Benioff. Activist investors raised concerns about all the spending, in addition to slowing revenue growth.

Salesforce sprung into action, slashing 10% of its headcount. Benioff proclaimed that the board’s mergers and acquisitions committee had been disbanded. The company’s finance chief at the time said it would reach a margin expansion goal two years early. And Salesforce started paying dividends to shareholders.

Initial reception to the Informatica announcement was generally favorable. “Salesforce is paying a reasonable multiple for the asset, in our view, and the deal should be more easily digested by investors than some of the company’s large deals in the past (i.e. Slack),” Stifel analysts led by J. Parker Lane wrote in a note to clients. The investment bank has a buy rating on Salesforce shares.

During the fiscal first quarter, Salesforce introduced the AgentExchange marketplace for artificial intelligence agents.

Management sees $2.76 to $2.78 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.11 billion to $10.16 billion in revenue for the fiscal second quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $2.73 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.01 billion in revenue.

Salesforce bumped up its full-year forecast. It called for $11.27 to $11.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $41.0 billion to $41.3 billion in revenue, implying revenue growth between 8% and 9%. The LSEG consensus included net income of $11.16 per share and $40.82 billion in revenue. The guidance in February was $11.09 to $11.17 in adjusted earnings per share, with $40.5 billion to $40.9 billion in revenue.

As of Wednesday’s close, the stock had slipped about 18% so far in 2025, while the S&P index was unchanged.

Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

WATCH: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: Data centers and chips are ‘commodities’

Technology

HP sinks 15% as company misses on earnings, guidance due to ‘added cost’ from tariffs

Published

1 hour ago

May 28, 2025

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HP sinks 15% as company misses on earnings, guidance due to 'added cost' from tariffs

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

HP reported second-quarter results that beat analysts’ estimates for revenue but missed on earnings and guidance, in part due to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Shares sank 15% after the report.

Here’s how the company did versus analysts’ estimates compiled by LSEG:

Earnings per share: 71 cents adjusted vs. 80 cents expected
Revenue: $13.22 billion vs. $13.14 billion expected.

Revenue for the quarter increased 3.3% from $12.8 billion in the same period last year. HP reported net income of $406 million, or 42 cents per share, down from $607 million, or 61 cents per share, a year ago.

For its third quarter, HP said it expects to report adjusted earnings of 68 cents to 80 cents per share, missing the average analyst estimate of 90 cents, according to LSEG. Full-year adjusted earnings will be within the range of $3 to $3.30 per share, while analysts were expecting $3.49 per share.

HP said its outlook “reflects the added cost driven by the current U.S. tariffs,” as well as the associated mitigations.

“While results in the quarter were impacted by a dynamic regulatory environment, we responded quickly to accelerate the expansion of our manufacturing footprint and further reduce our cost structure,” HP CEO Enrique Lores said in a statement.

Lores told CNBC’s Steve Kovach that HP has increased production in Vietnam, Thailand, India, Mexico and the U.S. By the end of June, Lores said the company expects nearly all of its products sold in North America will be built outside of China.

“Through our actions, we expect to fully mitigate the increased trade-related costs by Q4,” Lores said in the interview.

HP will hold its quarterly call with investors at 5 p.m. ET.