Silicon Valley swindler Elizabeth Holmes – founder of Theranos – is already plotting a comeback from her Texas prison camp, despite being only three years into her 10-year sentence, reports the New York Post.
Holmes (42), has managed to help her husband raise a reported $18m for another blood testing start-up, but an insider described her as “shameless and delusional” to think she could be taken seriously again by any medical and biotech professionals.
Much like her previous company, which reached a $9bn valuation before the science behind it was proven to be bunk and she was convicted of scamming investors, the new business, called Haemanthus, is a health tech company that apparently aims, once again, to revolutionise medical testing.
Industry experts said it has no publicly disclosed scientific advisers or peer-reviewed research for its product, and “sounds exactly like Theranos 2.0”.
Helmed by Holmes’ husband Billy Evans (33), it plans to build AI-driven devices using lasers to scan blood and look for diseases. It has yet to publicly launch.
Holmes caught renewed attention recently when a clip of her was released to promote a new film documenting her final days as a free woman in 2023.
Throughout her trial and beyond, Holmes, a mother of two young children with Evans, has insisted she is innocent.
The new company has raised $3.5m from friends and family and $15m from elsewhere, according to The New York Times, and publicly insists Holmes has no formal role. But sources with direct knowledge told NPR last year that Holmes has been offering Evans advice from inside prison, and in an interview last year, she told People magazine how she was still working to resume her career.
“I remain completely committed to my dream of making affordable healthcare solutions available to everyone,” she had said.
Prominent investors have passed on the Haemanthus pitch. In May 2025, venture capitalist Jim Breyer said his team declined to invest “for many of the same reasons we passed twice on Theranos”, while millionaire Michael Dell of Dell Technologies also turned down the opportunity, according to reports.
Holmes started Theranos in 2003 and ended up being billed as “the next Steve Jobs” by media outlets and venture capitalists.
She raised billons on the promise of a machine that could run hundreds of tests from just a pinprick of blood. But the tech never existed and investors were shown staged demos while blood samples went to secretly hacked commercial lab machines.
Established companies like Walgreens and Safeway partnered with the company until tests spat out false HIV and cancer results. The company shut down three years after a 2015 expose documented the con. Ex-boyfriend and Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani is serving 13 years, and he and Holmes also owe $452m in restitution.
Last year, the court rejected Holmes’ appeal where she claimed trial errors and improper restitution, citing overwhelming proof of her fraud.
The documentary on her pre-jailbird life will be released shortly: filming started 34 days before Holmes reported to prison in May 2023.
Early reviews noted that the filmmakers shy away from the subject of her guilt or innocence to focus instead on how her performance never stops.
“She is a narcissist who has no empathy for the patients harmed by Theranos’s tests and takes no responsibility for what they went through,” said one source.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Theranos founder Holmes asks Trump for early release
US court upholds Theranos founder’s conviction
Theranos: A cautionary tale on how not to commercialise medical advances