Right now, in a federal prison in Bryan, Texas, the most famous fraudster in modern Silicon Valley history picks up the phone. On the other end is Billy Evans: her partner, the father of her two children, and the CEO of a new blood-testing startup that has raised roughly $20 million. The prototype looks strikingly like the machine that put her in prison.
The company is called Haemanthus, Greek for “blood flower.” And according to NPR, Elizabeth Holmes is advising it from her cell.
Key Takeaways
- The company: Haemanthus is a diagnostics startup founded by Billy Evans, Elizabeth Holmes’ partner, incorporated in Delaware in February 2024, nine months into her 11-year fraud sentence.
- The money: It has raised roughly $20 million and has pitched toward $50 million, while Evans’ deck reportedly omits his connection to Holmes.
- The advisor: NPR reported in May 2025, citing two sources with direct knowledge, that Holmes was advising the company from federal prison in Bryan, Texas.
- The echo: Theranos raised over $700 million and hit a $10 billion valuation on technology that never worked; Holmes was convicted on four counts of fraud in January 2022.
- The runway: Holmes’ SEC officer-and-director ban expires in 2028 and covers only public companies. Haemanthus is private, and her scheduled release is August 16, 2032.
What Was the Theranos Scandal?
Theranos was the blood-testing startup that raised over $700 million on a technology that never worked, and became the defining Silicon Valley fraud of its era. In 2003, a 19-year-old Stanford dropout founded Theranos on a beautiful pitch: one drop of blood from a finger prick could run hundreds of medical tests. No needles, no labs, just a small machine called the Edison.
The technology never worked. Not once. But the story raised over $700 million, put Henry Kissinger and George Shultz around the board table, drove the valuation to $10 billion, and made Holmes, with the black turtleneck and famously deepened voice, the youngest self-made female billionaire in America. The money came from names that should have known better: Rupert Murdoch put in about $125 million, the Walton family roughly $150 million, the DeVos family $100 million. None of them, later reporting showed, demanded audited proof that the device worked. Theranos devices ran tests on real patients in Walgreens stores using machines that didn’t work.
A Wall Street Journal investigation ripped it apart in 2015. Theranos collapsed in 2018. Holmes was convicted on four counts of defrauding investors in January 2022 and sentenced to 11 years and 3 months; her co-conspirator, company president Sunny Balwani, was convicted on all twelve counts he faced and got nearly 13 years, with the pair ordered to pay $452 million in restitution. She’s been inside since May 2023, working a prison job that pays 31 cents an hour (here’s where Elizabeth Holmes is now). It remains one of the defining scandals of the century, the case every diagnostics investor swore they’d learned from.
Who Is Billy Evans, the CEO of Haemanthus?
Billy Evans is an MIT graduate and heir to a family that operates luxury hotels in California, and the father of Elizabeth Holmes’ two children. He met Holmes in 2017, after the Journal exposés, while the SEC was investigating and prosecutors were building their case; before that, he worked at the lidar company Luminar Technologies. He sat beside Holmes through the trial, had two children with her, and drove her to prison the day she surrendered.
Then, quietly, he got to work. His LinkedIn changed to “stealth startup,” dated October 2022, one month before Holmes was sentenced. Nobody noticed. In February 2024, nine months into her sentence, Haemanthus was incorporated in Delaware, operating out of Evans’ neighborhood in Austin, Texas, staffed largely by his former Luminar colleagues.
A Familiar Little Box
Haemanthus uses Raman spectroscopy: fire lasers at biological samples (blood, urine, saliva) and read the light that bounces back to identify molecular patterns, with AI layered on top to flag disease markers. The company claims the approach can detect cancer, ALS, and other conditions from tiny samples in seconds. One patent was granted in May 2025. The marketing language: “human health optimization.”
To be clear, Raman spectroscopy is real, Nobel-recognized science (C.V. Raman won the 1930 physics prize for discovering the effect) and laboratories genuinely use it to identify molecular signatures. The open question is the one Theranos never answered: whether the method can deliver broad, clinically reliable diagnostics from tiny samples, in a small box, at consumer scale. As of the last public reporting, the company had published no peer-reviewed validation that it can.
Then The New York Times obtained a photo of the prototype. The parallels were hard to ignore.
| Theranos | Haemanthus | |
|---|---|---|
| Pitch | Hundreds of tests from one drop of blood | Disease detection from tiny samples in seconds |
| Device | Small box-like “Edison” machine | Small box-like laser prototype |
| Strategy | Start small, then expand to consumer health | Start with veterinary diagnostics, then pivot to humans |
| Key figure | Elizabeth Holmes, CEO | Billy Evans, CEO and Holmes’ partner |
| Money raised | $700M+ | ~$20M, pitching toward $50M |
Evans’ pitch deck reportedly does not mention his connection to Holmes. Investors were asked to judge the technology on its merits, without being told the CEO’s partner is serving 11 years for lying about a nearly identical product. Tyler Shultz, the whistleblower who helped expose Theranos, put it bluntly: her fingerprints are all over it.
The Denial That Fell Apart in Hours
On May 10, 2025, NPR reported that Holmes had been advising Evans on the company from prison, citing two sources with direct knowledge. Hours later, Haemanthus posted a damage-control thread on X:
“This is not Theranos 2.0… Elizabeth Holmes has zero involvement in Haemanthus. We’ve learned from her company’s mistakes, but she has no role now or future.”
NPR’s sources contradicted the denial within hours. And three months earlier, Holmes had told People magazine, from prison, that she was drafting patents for new inventions and planned to resume her biotech career after release. The thread has since been partially deleted.
Some of the smartest money saw it instantly. James Breyer, one of Facebook’s earliest investors, was approached and passed, telling the Times that in diagnostics the difference between a compelling story and a great company lies in scientific defensibility and clinical utility. Michael Dell’s venture firm also passed. But roughly $20 million still arrived, from friends, family, and investors in Austin and San Francisco who either missed the red flags or invested anyway. It’s the same machinery that let Cluely raise $20 million on pure controversy, and the same elite-network blind spot that let Les Wexner hand Jeffrey Epstein control of his fortune: when the story is good enough, due diligence becomes optional.
The timeline tells the story better than any denial does:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 2022 | Holmes convicted on four counts of investor fraud |
| October 2022 | Evans’ LinkedIn quietly switches to “stealth startup” |
| November 2022 | Holmes sentenced to 11 years, 3 months |
| May 2023 | Holmes reports to federal prison in Bryan, Texas |
| February 2024 | Haemanthus incorporated in Delaware |
| May 2025 | First patent granted; NPR reports Holmes is advising from prison |
| 2028 | Holmes’ SEC ban on public-company officer roles expires |
| August 16, 2032 | Scheduled release date |
The Critical Choice
The decision that defines this story belongs to the investors, not to Evans. The connection to Elizabeth Holmes was never a secret. It just wasn’t in the pitch deck. Everyone who wired money into Haemanthus chose to fund a blood-testing startup run by the partner of the most famous diagnostics fraudster alive, incorporated while she sat in prison, building a device that looks like the Edison. That choice, story over scientific proof, is the exact choice that built Theranos. The system that was supposed to learn from the first fraud chose not to.
Where Things Stand Now
Holmes’ SEC ban on serving as an officer or director of a public company expires in 2028, four years before she walks free, and nothing in it covers private companies. Haemanthus is a private company. By her scheduled release on August 16, 2032, it will be eight years old, with a team, patents, investors, and possibly revenue, and no legal barrier between her and a corner office.
The Edison machine sits in a federal evidence locker. The Haemanthus machine is headed for veterinary clinics. And the woman who told one of the most expensive lies in Silicon Valley history is, by NPR’s account, on the phone helping write the next chapter.
