Elizabeth Holmes

• 1. Introduction

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  Elizabeth Holmes was twenty-nine years past her first day at Stanford when Forbes named her the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the United States. That was in 2015. The magazine based its judgment on a valuation of $9 billion for her company, Theranos. Twelve months later, Forbes revised her net worth to zero. Few fortunes have been built and erased on such a public stage in so short a span. This documentary follows the questions that gap raises. How did a college dropout assemble some of the most famous names in American government around a blood-testing company? What did the company's machines actually do? Why did a jury treat different accusations so differently? And what does a story this dramatic leave behind for everyone who came after her?

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• 2. The Making of a Founder

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  Elizabeth Anne Holmes was born on the 3rd of February 1984 in Washington, D.C. Her father, Christian Rasmus Holmes IV, was a vice president at Clean Energy Solutions Group, a subsidiary of Enron. Her mother, Noel Anne, worked as a staffer for a congressional committee. Christian later held executive positions at government agencies, among them USAID, the EPA and USTDA.

  Charles Louis Fleischmann, a Jewish-Hungarian immigrant who founded Fleischmann's Yeast, was one of her paternal great-great-great-grandfathers. A family friend, Joseph Fuisz, said the Holmes family was very proud of its yeast empire. He offered a theory about the girl: "I think the parents very much yearned for the days of yore when the family was one of the richest in America. And I think Elizabeth channeled that, and at a young age."

  At St. John's School in Houston, Holmes took an interest in computer programming. She says she started her first business there, selling C++ compilers to Chinese universities. Her parents arranged Mandarin tutoring at home, and partway through high school she began attending Stanford University's summer Mandarin program.

  In 2002 she enrolled at Stanford to study chemical engineering. She worked as a student researcher and laboratory assistant in the School of Engineering. After her freshman year, she spent time in a laboratory at the Genome Institute of Singapore. There she drew blood samples with syringes while testing for SARS-CoV-1. In 2003 she filed her first patent application, for a wearable drug-delivery patch. In March 2004 she dropped out and used her tuition money as seed funding for a consumer healthcare technology company.

  The company itself dates to 2003, when Holmes founded Real-Time Cures in Palo Alto, California. Her stated aim was to democratize healthcare. She also pointed to her own fear of needles as a motivation for testing blood in tiny amounts.

  Phyllis Gardner, a Stanford professor of medicine, heard Holmes pitch the idea of reaping "vast amounts of data from a few droplets of blood derived from the tip of a finger." Gardner replied, "I don't think your idea is going to work." She explained that what Holmes described was impossible. Several other expert professors gave Holmes the same answer.

  Holmes did not relent. Channing Robertson, her advisor and the dean of the School of Engineering, backed the idea. In 2003 the company was renamed Theranos, a blend of the words "therapy" and "diagnosis." The founders had decided that too many people were skeptical of the word "cure." Robertson became the first board member, and he began introducing Holmes to venture capitalists.

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• 3. Money and Statesmen

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  Tim Draper, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, wrote Holmes a check for $1 million after hearing her first pitch. He was the father of her childhood friend Jesse Draper, and he became her first major investor. By December 2004 Holmes had raised $6 million. By the end of 2010, Theranos held more than $92 million in venture capital.

  In July 2011 Holmes was introduced to George Shultz, a former secretary of state. After a two-hour meeting, he joined the Theranos board of directors. Over the next three years, Holmes was credited with forming "the most illustrious board in U.S. corporate history."

  Shultz's early involvement helped her recruit others. The eventual 12-member board included Henry Kissinger, another former secretary of state, and William Perry, a former secretary of defense. James Mattis, a future secretary of defense, sat beside Gary Roughead, a retired U.S. Navy admiral. Two former senators, Bill Frist of Tennessee and Sam Nunn of Georgia, also served. So did Dick Kovacevich, a former CEO of Wells Fargo, and Riley Bechtel, a former CEO of Bechtel.

  The credibility of Theranos was attributed in part to this circle. Kissinger, Shultz, Mattis and Betsy DeVos all served, or would go on to serve, as U.S. presidential cabinet officials.

  The investor list grew just as grand. It came to include Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family, the DeVos family, the Cox family of Cox Enterprises, and Carlos Slim Helú. When Theranos folded, each of these investors lost somewhere between tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

  For years, Holmes ran Theranos in stealth mode, with no press releases and no company website. That ended in September 2013, when the company announced a partnership with Walgreens to open in-store blood sample collection centers. Eric Topol, the editor-in-chief of Medscape, interviewed her and praised "this phenomenal rebooting of laboratory medicine."

  The following year brought a rush of attention. Holmes appeared on the covers of Fortune, Forbes, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and Inc. Forbes ranked her number 110 on its Forbes 400 list. Theranos had by then raised more than $400 million in venture capital. By the end of 2014, her name appeared on 18 U.S. patents and 66 foreign patents.

  In 2015 she reached agreements with Cleveland Clinic, Capital Blue Cross, and AmeriHealth Caritas to use Theranos technology. Those deals arrived just as a newspaper reporter was closing in on the company.

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• 4. The Public Persona

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  The year 2015 was a season of trophies for Holmes. She joined the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows and appeared on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people. Forbes gave her its Under 30 Doers Award and ranked her number 73 among the world's most powerful women. Glamour named her Woman of the Year, with the actor Jared Leto presenting the award. Pepperdine University gave her an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.

  The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans made her its youngest recipient in history. Fortune had named her Businessperson of the Year and put her on its 40 Under 40 list. Bloomberg counted her among its 50 Most Influential. President Barack Obama named her a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship.

  Her promotional work in 2015 reached beyond awards. In June she partnered with Carlos Slim to improve blood testing in Mexico. In October she announced #IronSisters, an effort to help women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. She also helped draft and pass an Arizona law letting people buy lab tests without insurance or a provider's approval. During that campaign she misrepresented the accuracy and effectiveness of the Theranos device.

  Then there was the wardrobe. Holmes admired Apple founder Steve Jobs and deliberately copied his style, often wearing a black turtleneck sweater. She said her mother had dressed her in black turtlenecks from around the age of eight. She has also said she began wearing them when she founded the company in 2003. One employee said she was the one who suggested, in 2007, that Holmes copy Jobs's Issey Miyake turtleneck look.

  Her voice drew comment too. In most public appearances she spoke in a deep baritone. A former Theranos colleague later claimed that, when he was hired, she welcomed him in a higher voice typical of a woman her age. Phyllis Gardner of Stanford also denies that the deep voice is natural. Her family maintained that it was authentic. In a 2023 New York Times interview, Holmes spoke in her natural, higher pitch and confirmed that the low voice was an affectation.

  The applause ended quickly. In 2016, Fortune included her in its feature on "The World's 19 Most Disappointing Leaders."

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• 5. The Edison Exposed

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  John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal began a secret, months-long investigation after a medical expert gave him a tip. The expert thought Theranos's Edison blood-testing device looked suspicious. Carreyrou spoke with former employees who acted as whistleblowers and obtained company documents.

  When David Boies, Holmes's lawyer, learned of the investigation, Holmes began a campaign to stop publication. It included legal and financial threats against both the Journal and the whistleblowers, tied to the expected release of trade secrets.

  In October 2015 the Journal published Carreyrou's article anyway. It reported that the Edison device gave inaccurate results. It also revealed that the company had been using commercially available machines made by other companies for most of its testing. Carreyrou kept reporting in a series of follow-up articles. In 2018 he published a book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.

  Holmes denied every claim and called the Journal a "tabloid." She promised the company would publish data on the accuracy of its tests. That same evening she appeared on CNBC's Mad Money. Host Jim Cramer remarked, "The article was pretty brutal." Holmes answered, "This is what happens when you work to change things, first they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world."

  Regulators arrived next. In January 2016 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent a warning letter after inspecting the company's laboratory in Newark, California. Inspectors found irregularities involving staff proficiency, procedures, and equipment. The problems were still unfixed in March 2016. CMS regulators then proposed a two-year ban on Holmes owning or operating a certified clinical laboratory. On The Today Show, Holmes said she was "devastated we did not catch and fix these issues faster."

  In July 2016 CMS imposed a two-year ban on Holmes owning, operating, or directing a blood-testing service. Theranos appealed to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services appeals board. Soon afterward, Walgreens ended its relationship with the company and closed its in-store collection centers. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered Theranos to stop using its Capillary Tube Nanotainer, one of its core inventions.

  The State of Arizona sued in 2017. It alleged that Theranos had sold 1.5 million blood tests to Arizonans while concealing or misrepresenting important facts about them. In April 2017 the company settled by refunding the cost of the tests and paying $225,000 in civil fines and attorney fees, for a total of $4.65 million. Reports also described an unspecified FBI investigation and two class action fraud lawsuits. Holmes denied wrongdoing.

  On the 16th of May 2017, about 99 percent of shareholders agreed to dismiss all litigation and potential litigation in exchange for shares of preferred stock. Holmes released part of her equity to offset dilution for shareholders who did not take part.

  At its height in 2015, Theranos had more than 800 employees. It dismissed 340 people in October 2016 and another 155 in January 2017. In April 2018 it filed a WARN Act notice in California announcing layoffs of 105 more, which left fewer than two dozen on staff. Most of the rest were laid off in August 2018. On the 5th of September 2018, the company announced it had begun formally dissolving, with remaining cash and assets going to creditors.

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• 6. Sunny Balwani

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  Holmes was 18 and had just graduated from high school when she met Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani in 2002. They met in Beijing on a trip tied to Stanford's Mandarin program. Balwani, born in Pakistan, had immigrated first to India and then to the United States. He was 19 years older than Holmes and was married to another woman.

  Balwani divorced in 2002 and became romantically involved with Holmes in 2003, about when she left university. They moved into an apartment together in 2005. He did not officially join Theranos until 2009, when he became chief operating officer. Even so, he had advised Holmes behind the scenes from the start. Their relationship stayed hidden for most of the company's history and lasted more than a decade.

  Employees described a "dysfunctional corporate culture" of "secrecy and fear" under the pair. Staff said that people who "raised concerns or objections" were "usually marginalized or fired."

  Balwani left Theranos in 2016, after the investigations began, and the circumstances are unclear. Holmes has said she fired him. Balwani says he left of his own accord.

  On the 29th of November 2021, Holmes took the stand and gave a very different account of the relationship. She testified that she had been raped as a Stanford student and had sought solace from Balwani afterward. She said he was very controlling, and that at times he berated and sexually abused her. By her account, he wanted to "kill the person" she was and create a "new Elizabeth." She also testified that Balwani had not forced her to make the false statements to investors, business partners, journalists and company directors described in the case. In court filings, Balwani has "categorically" denied the abuse allegations, calling them "false and inflammatory."

  In January 2022, NPR obtained a partial police report from the evening of the 5th of October 2003. In it, Holmes had called police and alleged she was sexually assaulted at a fraternity house at Stanford between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. that morning. The report supported what she said at trial: "I was questioning how I was going to be able to process that rape experience and what I wanted to do with my life, and I decided that I was going to build a life by building a company." It gave the street address of the Sigma Chi house but named no alleged perpetrator. The deputies' report was withheld from full release.

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• 7. Charges, Trial and Appeal

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  On the 14th of March 2018, Holmes settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The agency had charged her, Theranos, and former Theranos president Ramesh Balwani with taking more than $700 million from investors while advertising a false product. One accusation was that the company falsely claimed the U.S. Department of Defense used its technology in combat. Another was that it claimed a $100-million revenue stream in 2014, when it earned only $100,000.

  Holmes agreed to give up her voting control of Theranos and to return 18.9 million shares to the company. She accepted a ten-year ban on serving as an officer or director of a public company, and she paid a $500,000 fine.

  Criminal charges followed in June 2018. After a two-year investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, a federal grand jury indicted Holmes and Balwani. The counts were nine of wire fraud and two of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Both pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors alleged two schemes, one aimed at investors and one at doctors and patients. After the indictment, Holmes resigned as CEO but stayed on as chairwoman of the board.

  U.S. district judge Edward Davila presided at the trial in the Northern District of California. Holmes hired lawyers from Williams & Connolly, a firm known for defending white-collar crime cases. The COVID-19 pandemic and her pregnancy delayed the proceedings for more than a year, and the trial began on the 31st of August 2021.

  Holmes testified in her own defense for seven days. She claimed, among other things, that staff had misled her about the technology and that Balwani held sway over her. The evidence described her role in faked demonstrations, falsified validation reports, misleading claims about contracts, and overstated financials.

  The verdict came on the 3rd of January 2022. The jury found her guilty on four of the seven counts about defrauding investors: three of wire fraud and one of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. It found her not guilty on four counts about defrauding patients. On the three remaining investor counts, the jury returned no verdict. The judge declared a mistrial on those, and prosecutors later agreed to dismiss them. Holmes stayed free on $500,000 bail, secured with property.

  In November 2022 Davila sentenced her to prison. He also ordered Holmes and Balwani jointly to pay $452 million in restitution to the victims. He recommended Federal Prison Camp, Bryan, a minimum-security facility in Bryan, Texas. Holmes reported there on the 30th of May 2023. The Federal Bureau of Prisons projected her release in 2032, about two years early under its good-conduct guidelines.

  Holmes appealed her conviction and sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Her lawyers argued that Davila had made serious legal errors. They cited his allowing certain government reports and expert analysis, his limits on cross-examination of former laboratory director Adam Rosendorff, and his exclusion of some of Balwani's testimony.

  Judges Jacqueline Nguyen, Ryan D. Nelson, and Mary M. Schroeder heard arguments in June 2024. In February 2025 they rejected her arguments and affirmed the conviction and sentence. By December 2025, the Los Angeles Times reported, Holmes had begun campaigning for a presidential pardon from President Donald Trump.

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• 8. Afterlife in Culture

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  William "Billy" Evans, heir to the family-owned Evans Hotels group in the San Diego area, met Holmes in early 2017. In early 2019 the two became engaged; he was 27. They reportedly married in a private ceremony in mid-2019, though neither has directly confirmed it, and several sources still call him her partner. Holmes gave birth to a son in July 2021.

  In October 2022, weeks before her sentencing hearing, reports said she was pregnant again. A court filing from February 2023 accused her of conceiving as a strategy to delay prison. Holmes denied this. She said she wanted to grow her family and that the child was conceived before her indictment, which she had not anticipated. Before prison, the family lived in the Mortimer Fleishhacker House in Woodside, California.

  Publishers and producers moved quickly on her story. In June 2016, Deadline Hollywood reported that Jennifer Lawrence would play Holmes in a film directed by Adam McKay. It would be based on Carreyrou's book, which was still unpublished. Legendary had bought the film rights nearly two years before the book appeared in May 2018. In December 2021, The Hollywood Reporter said Apple Studios would produce and distribute the film, with Legendary co-producing.

  In January 2019, ABC News, Nightline, and Rebecca Jarvis released a podcast and documentary called The Dropout. It featured interviews and deposition tapes with Holmes, Balwani, and her brother Christian Holmes. It also included Tyler Shultz, the whistleblower and grandson of board member George Shultz. HBO premiered The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley on the 18th of March 2019, after its Sundance showing on the 24th of January 2019. A musical number about famous scammers on the comedy-drama Younger in June 2021 featured Elizabeth Stanley as Holmes. The Australian newsmagazine 60 Minutes covered the story in August 2021.

  In March 2022, Hulu released a miniseries, also called The Dropout. Amanda Seyfried played Holmes and won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Seyfried's work ended the big-screen plan. In November 2022 Jennifer Lawrence called off the film, saying, "I was like, 'Yeah, we don't need to redo that.' She did it."

  The story has also shaped how others are judged. Female entrepreneurs, especially in science and health care, are often compared to Holmes. Technology journalist Erin Griffith wrote in The New York Times that "Holmes continues to loom large across the start-up world because of the audacity of her story, which has permeated popular culture." Founders told her the frequent comparisons are "pernicious."

  In May 2023, as she prepared for prison, Holmes gave her first interview in seven years, to The New York Times. In 2025 she resurfaced in an interview from prison. There she said she still intended to transform the medical testing industry.

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