Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos promising a device that could run hundreds of medical tests from a single finger-prick of blood, raising over $700 million from prominent investors and board members and becoming, on paper, the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world.
A 2015 Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that Theranos's proprietary technology produced wildly inaccurate results and that the company was secretly running most tests on standard commercial machines rather than its own device. Regulators revoked the company's lab license, partnerships collapsed, and its valuation went from $9 billion to zero.
Theranos dissolved in 2018. Holmes was convicted of fraud in 2022 and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, one of the most prominent Silicon Valley figures ever criminally convicted over a failed startup.
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