Holmes’ family moved when she was young, from Washington, DC to Houston.
Washington, DC
Getty Images
Source: Fortune
When she was 7, Holmes tried to invent her own time machine, filling up an entire notebook with detailed engineering drawings. At the age of 9, Holmes told relatives she wanted to be a billionaire when she grew up. Her relatives described her as saying it with the “utmost seriousness and determination.”
Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes.
Carlo Allegri/Reuters
Source: CBS News, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Holmes had an “intense competitive streak” from a young age. She often played Monopoly with her younger brother and cousin, and she would insist on playing until the end, collecting the houses and hotels until she won. If Holmes was losing, she would often storm off. More than once, she ran directly through a screen on the door.
Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, attends a panel discussion during the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York, September 29, 2015.
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Source: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
It was during high school that Holmes developed her work ethic, often staying up late to study. She quickly became a straight-A student, and even started her own business: she sold C++ compilers, a type of software that translates computer code, to Chinese schools.
Tyrone Siu/Reuters
Source: Fortune, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Holmes started taking Mandarin lessons and part-way through high school, talked her way into being accepted by Stanford University’s summer program, which culminated in a trip to Beijing.
Yepoka Yeebo / Business Insider
Source: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Inspired by her great-great-grandfather Christian Holmes, a surgeon, Holmes decided she wanted to go into medicine. But she discovered early on that she was terrified of needles. Later, she said this influenced her to start Theranos.
Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
Source: San Francisco Business Times
Holmes went to Stanford to study chemical engineering. When she was a freshman, she became a “president’s scholar,” an honor that came with a $3,000 stipend to go toward a research project.
STANFORD, CA – MAY 22: People ride bikes past Hoover Tower on the Stanford University campus on May 22, 2014 in Stanford, California. According to the Academic Ranking of World Universities by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Stanford University ranked second behind Harvard University as the top universities in the world. UC Berkeley ranked third. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Source: Fortune
Holmes spent the summer after her freshman year interning at the Genome Institute in Singapore. She got the job partly because she spoke Mandarin.
An office worker walks along the Singapore River front during the lunch hour.
Wong Maye-E/AP
Source: Fortune
As a sophomore, Holmes went to one of her professors, Channing Robertson, and said: “Let’s start a company.” With his blessing, she founded Real-Time Cures, later changing the company’s name to Theranos. Thanks to a typo, early employees’ paychecks actually said “Real-Time Curses.”
Getty Images
Source: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Holmes soon filed a patent application for a “medical device for analyte monitoring and drug delivery,” a wearable device that would administer medication, monitor patients’ blood, and adjust the dosage as needed.
Reuters/Brian Snyder
Source: Fortune, US Patent Office
By the next semester, Holmes had dropped out of Stanford altogether and was working on Theranos in the basement of a college house.
Jeff Chiu/AP
Source: Wall Street Journal
Theranos’s business model was based around the idea that it could run blood tests, using proprietary technology that required only a finger pinprick and a small amount of blood. Holmes said the tests would be able to detect medical conditions like cancer and high cholesterol.
Theranos Chairman, CEO and Founder Elizabeth Holmes (L) and TechCrunch Writer and Moderator Jonathan Shieber speak onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt at Pier 48 on September 8, 2014 in San Francisco, California
Steve Jennings/Getty Images
Source: Wall Street Journal
Holmes started raising money for Theranos from prominent investors like Oracle founder Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, the father of a childhood friend and the founder of prominent VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Theranos raised more than $700 million, and Draper has continued to defend Holmes.
Investor Tim Draper (right).
CNBC
Source: SEC, Crunchbase
Holmes took investors’ money on the condition that she wouldn’t have to reveal how Theranos’ technology worked. Plus, she would have the final say over everything having to do with the company.
JP Yim/Getty
Source: Vanity Fair
That obsession with secrecy extended to every aspect of Theranos. For the first decade Holmes spent building her company, Theranos operated in stealth mode. She even took three former Theranos employees to court, claiming they had misused Theranos trade secrets.
Kimberly White/Getty
Source: San Francisco Business Times
Holmes’ attitude toward secrecy and running a company was borrowed from a Silicon Valley hero of hers: former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Holmes started dressing in black turtlenecks like Jobs, decorated her office with his favorite furniture, and like Jobs, never took vacations.
Steve Jobs.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Source: Vanity Fair
Even Holmes’s uncharacteristically deep voice may have been part of a carefully crafted image intended to help her fit in in the male-dominated business world. In ABC’s podcast on Holmes called “The Dropout,” former Theranos employees said the CEO sometimes “fell out of character,” particularly after drinking, and would speak in a higher voice.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, during the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York.
Lucas Jackson/Reuters
Source: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, The Cut
Holmes was a demanding boss and wanted her employees to work as hard as she did. She had her assistants track when employees arrived and left each day. To encourage people to work longer hours, she started having dinner catered to the office around 8 p.m. each night.
Theranos
Source: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Shortly after Holmes dropped out of Stanford at age 19, she began dating Theranos president and COO Sunny Balwani, who was 20 years her senior. The two met during Holmes’ third year in Stanford’s summer Mandarin program, the summer before she went to college. She was bullied by some of the other students, and Balwani had come to her aid.
Footage of Sunny Balwani presenting.
“60 Minutes”
Source: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Balwani became Holmes’ No. 2 at Theranos despite having little experience. He was said to be a bully and often tracked his employees’ whereabouts. Holmes and Balwani eventually broke up in spring 2016 when Holmes pushed him out of the company.
Sunny Balwani pictured in January 2019.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Source: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
In 2008, the Theranos board decided to remove Holmes as CEO in favor of someone more experienced. But over the course of a two-hour meeting, Holmes convinced them to let her stay in charge of her company.
Jamie McCarthy / Getty
Source: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Theranos quickly began securing outside partnerships. Capital Blue Cross and Cleveland Clinic signed on to offer Theranos tests to their patients, and Walgreens made a deal to open Theranos testing centers in their stores. Theranos also formed a secret partnership with Safeway worth $350 million.
A Theranos testing center inside a Walgreens.
Melia Robinson/Business Insider
Source: Wired, Business Insider
In 2011, Holmes hired her younger brother, Christian, to work at Theranos, although he didn’t have a medical or science background. Christian Holmes spent his early days at Theranos reading about sports online and recruiting his Duke University fraternity brothers to join the company. People dubbed Holmes and his crew the “Frat Pack” and “Therabros.”
Elizabeth Holmes and her brother, Christian.
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Source: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
At one point, Holmes was the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire with a net worth of around $4.5 billion.
Kimberly White/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize
Source: Forbes
Holmes was obsessed with security at Theranos. She asked anyone who visited the company’s headquarters to sign non-disclosure agreements before being allowed in the building and had security guards escort visitors everywhere — even to the bathroom.
Michael Dalder/Reuters
Holmes hired bodyguards to drive her around in a black Audi sedan. Her nickname was “Eagle One.” The windows in her office had bulletproof glass.Source: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Around the same time, questions were being raised about Theranos’ technology. Ian Gibbons — chief scientist at Theranos and one of the company’s first hires — warned Holmes that the tests weren’t ready for the public to take and that there were inaccuracies in the technology. Outside scientists began voicing their concerns about Theranos, too.
Melia Robinson/Tech Insider
Source: Vanity Fair, Business Insider
By August 2015, the FDA began investigating Theranos, and regulators from the government body that oversees laboratories found “major inaccuracies” in the testing Theranos was doing on patients.
Mike Segar/Reuters
Source: Vanity Fair
By October 2015, Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou published his investigation into Theranos’s struggles with its technology. Carreyrou’s reporting sparked the beginning of the company’s downward spiral.
Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou.
CBS “60 Minutes”
Source: Wall Street Journal
Carreyrou found that Theranos’ blood-testing machine, named Edison, couldn’t give accurate results, so Theranos was running its samples through the same machines used by traditional blood-testing companies.
Carlos Osorio/AP
Source: Wall Street Journal
Holmes appeared on CNBC’s “Mad Money” shortly after the WSJ published its story to defend herself and Theranos. “This is what happens when you work to change things, and first they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world,” Holmes said.
CNBC/YouTube
Source: CNBC
By 2016, the FDA, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and SEC were all looking into Theranos.
Getty
Source: Wall Street Journal, Wired
In July 2016, Holmes was banned from the lab-testing industry for two years. By October, Theranos had shut down its lab operations and wellness centers.
Mike Blake/Reuters
Source: Business Insider
In March 2018, Theranos, Holmes, and Balwani were charged with “massive fraud” by the SEC. Holmes agreed to give up financial and voting control of the company, pay a $500,000 fine, and return 18.9 million shares of Theranos stock. She also isn’t allowed to be the director or officer of a publicly traded company for 10 years.
Jeff Chiu/AP
Source: Business Insider
Despite the charges, Holmes was allowed to stay on as CEO of Theranos, since it’s a private company. The company had been hanging on by a thread, and Holmes wrote to investors asking for more money to save Theranos. “In light of where we are, this is no easy ask,” Holmes wrote.
Kimberly White/Getty Images for Fortune
Source: Business Insider
In Theranos’ final days, Holmes reportedly got a Siberian husky puppy named Balto that she brought into the office. However, the dog wasn’t potty trained, and would go to the bathroom inside the company’s office and during meetings.
A Siberian husky (not Holmes’ dog).
Kateryna Orlova/Shutterstock
Source: Vanity Fair
In June 2018, Theranos announced that Holmes was stepping down as CEO. On the same day, the Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury had charged Holmes, along with Balwani, with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos, speaks at the Wall Street Journal Digital Live (WSJDLive) conference at the Montage hotel in Laguna Beach, California, October 21, 2015.
Mike Blake/Reuters
Source: Business Insider, CNBC
Theranos sent an email to shareholders in September 2018 announcing that the company was shutting down. Theranos reportedly said it planned to spend the next few months repaying creditors with its remaining resources.
Mike Blake/Reuters
Source: Wall Street Journal
Around the time Theranos’ time was coming to an end, Holmes made her first public appearance alongside William “Billy” Evans, a 27-year-old heir to a hospitality property management company in California. The two reportedly first met in 2017, and were seen together in 2018 at Burning Man, the art festival in the Nevada desert.
Jim Rankin/Toronto Star via Getty Images
Source: Daily Mail
Holmes is said to wear Evans’ MIT “signet ring” on a chain around her neck, and the couple reportedly posts photos “professing their love for each other” on a private Instagram account. Evans’ parents are reportedly “flabbergasted” at their son’s decision to marry Holmes.
Source: Vanity Fair, New York Post
It’s unclear where Holmes and Evans currently reside, but they were previously living in a $5,000-a-month apartment in San Francisco until April 2019. The apartment was located just a few blocks from one of the city’s top tourist attractions, the famously crooked block of Lombard Street.
Lombard Place Apartments, where Holmes used to live.
Rent SF Now
Source: Business Insider
It was later reported that Holmes and Evans got engaged in early 2019, then married in June in a secretive wedding ceremony. Former Theranos employees were reportedly not invited to the wedding, according to Vanity Fair.
Gilbert Carrasquillo/Getty Images; Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Source: Vanity Fair, New York Post
Besides the criminal case, Holmes was also involved in a number of civil lawsuits, including one in Arizona brought by former Theranos patients over inaccurate blood tests. The lawyers representing her in the Arizona case said in late 2019 they hadn’t been paid over a year and asked to be removed from Holmes’ legal team.
Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes leaves after a hearing at a federal court.
Reuters/Stephen Lam
Source: Business Insider
Holmes’ lawyers in the federal case had tried to get the government’s entire case thrown out. In February 2020, Holmes caught a break after some of the charges against her were dropped when a judge ruled that some patients didn’t suffer financial loss.
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Source: Business Insider
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, Holmes’ lawyers asked the judge in April 2020 to deem the case “essential” so the defense team could defy lockdown orders and continue to travel and meet face-to-face. The judge said he was “taken aback” by the defense’s pleas to violate lockdown.
Reuters/Robert Galbraith
Source: Business Insider
It soon become clear that the pandemic — and the health risks associated with assembling a trial in one — would make the July trial date unrealistic. Through hearings held on Zoom, the presiding judge initially pushed the trial back to October 2020 and later postponed it further to March 2021.
Passengers wear masks as they walk through LAX airport.
Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
Source: Business Insider
In March 2021, Holmes requested another delay to the trial because she was pregnant. She asked to push back the trial to August 31, and her request was granted. Holmes reportedly gave birth to the child in July.
Nhat V. Meyer/MediaNews Group/Mercury News via Getty Images
Source: Business Insider, CNBC
Heading into the trial, Holmes felt “wronged, like Salem-witch-trial wronged,” says a person who used to work with her closely.
Holmes, right, leaving the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building in San Jose, California with her defense team on May 4, 2021.
Nhat V. Meyer/MediaNews Group/Mercury News via Getty Images
Source: Business Insider
The trial kicked off in September. In opening statements, prosecutors argued that, “Out of time and out of money, Elizabeth Holmes decided to lie.” Meanwhile, the defense argued that although Theranos ultimately crumbled, “Failure is not a crime. Trying your hardest and coming up short is not a crime.”
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes arrives at the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building with her defense team on August 31, 2021 in San Jose, California.
Ethan Swope/Getty Images
Source: Business Insider
The list of possible witnesses for the trial named roughly 200 people, including the likes of Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger, James Mattis, and Holmes herself.
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes leaves the Robert F. Peckham U.S. Courthouse with her mother, Noel Holmes, during her trial.
Brittany Hosea-Small/Reuters
Source: Business Insider
In the end, the trial featured testimony from just over 30 witnesses.
Vicki Behringer/Reuters
Source: Business Insider
Over the course of 11 weeks, prosecutors called 29 witnesses to testify — including former Theranos employees, investors, patients, and doctors — before resting their case in November.
Vicki Behringer
Source: Business Insider
The defense then began making its case, calling just three witnesses, including Holmes herself.
Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/The Mercury News via Getty Images
Source: Business Insider
On the stand, Holmes said Balwani emotionally and sexually abused her during their relationship.
Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto via Getty Images (Holmes). Justin Sullivan/Getty Images (Balwani).
Source: Business Insider
Holmes testified that Balwani controlled what she ate and how her schedule looked, told her she had to “become a new Elizabeth” to succeed in business, and forced her to have sex with him when she didn’t want to because “he would say that he wanted me to know he still loved me.”
Former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny’ Balwani leaves the Robert F. Peckham U.S. Federal Court on June 28, 2019 in San Jose, California.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Source: Business Insider
Holmes also admitted that she added some pharmaceutical companies’ logos to Theranos’ reports without authorization. Investors previously said they took some reassurance in those reports because, based on the logos, they thought major pharmaceutical companies had validated Theranos’ technology. Holmes said she added the logos to convey that work was done in partnership with those companies, but in hindsight she wishes she had “done it differently.”
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Source: Business Insider
Holmes also acknowledged on the stand that she hid Theranos’ use of modified commercial devices from investors. She said she did this because company counsel told her that alterations the company made to the machines were trade secrets and needed to be protected as such.
Brittany Hosea-Small/Reuters
Source: Business Insider
Holmes spent seven days on the stand before the defense rested its case in early December.
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes arrives to attend her fraud trial at federal court in San Jose, California, U.S., December 16, 2021.
Peter DaSilva/Reuters
Source: Business Insider
In closing arguments, prosecutors argued that Holmes “chose fraud over business failure” while the defense argued she was “building a business, not a criminal enterprise.”
Elizabeth Holmes walks into federal court in San Jose, Calif., Friday, Dec. 17, 2021.
Nic Coury/Associated Press
Source: Business Insider
After 15 weeks of trial, Holmes’ case headed to a jury of eight men and four women on December 17, 2021.
Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former CEO of blood testing and life sciences company Theranos, leaves the courthouse with her husband Billy Evans after the first day of her fraud trial in San Jose, California on September 8, 2021.
Nick Otto/AFP/Getty Images
Source: Business Insider
Jurors deliberated for a total of seven days over the next few weeks before telling the court on January 3, 2022, that they were deadlocked on three of the 11 charges against Holmes. The judge read off some jury instructions to the group in court before instructing them to go back and deliberate further.
Kate Munsch/Reuters
Source: Business Insider
Hours later, the jury returned a mixed verdict for Holmes, finding her guilty on one count of conspiracy to defraud investors and three counts of wire fraud. They found her not guilty on four other counts and failed to reach a verdict on the remaining three counts.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Source: Business Insider
Holmes faced the possibility of decades in prison. Each count carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence, a $250,000 fine, and a requirement to pay victims restitution.
AP Photo/Nic Coury, File
Source: Business Insider
Legal experts told Insider it was unlikely Holmes would get 20 years at sentencing, but she probably wouldn’t get off without serving any time either.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Source: Business Insider
Holmes was not taken into custody following the verdict and was to remain free until her sentencing on a $500,000 bond secured by property.
Peter DaSilva/Reuters
Source: Business Insider
Since the conviction, Holmes and Theranos have been the focus of a Hulu limited series, “The Dropout,” based on the ABC News podcast of the same name.
Amanda Seyfried in “The Dropout” (left); Elizabeth Holmes (right)
Beth Dubber/Hulu; Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch
Source: Business Insider
Holmes is played by Amanda Seyfried in the dramatized series, which asks the question, “How did the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire lose it all in the blink of an eye?”
Amanda Seyfried in “The Dropout.”
Hulu
Source: Hulu
The show premiered March 3, 2022, and also stars Naveen Andrews as Balwani, Holmes’ right-hand man at Theranos.
Beth Dubber/Hulu; Michael Short/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Source: Business Insider
In May 2022, Holmes pleaded with a judge to toss her conviction.
AP
Source: Business Insider
In a 24-page filing on May 27, Holmes’ attorneys argued for her acquittal, saying the evidence was “insufficient to sustain the convictions.”
Nick Otto/AFP via Getty Images
They wrote, “Because no rational juror could have found the elements of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud beyond a reasonable doubt on this record, the Court should grant Ms. Holmes’ motion for judgment of acquittal.””Even if Ms. Holmes committed wire fraud against an investor (she did not) and even if Mr. Balwani committed wire fraud against an investor, that does not prove a conspiratorial agreement between them, nor does it prove that Ms. Holmes willfully joined any agreement,” the attorneys continued in the filing.The presiding judge tentatively denied Holmes’ request in September.
The witness was former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff. According to an account of the incident from Billy Evans, Holmes’ partner, Rosendorff showed up at their home looking “disheveled” and said he felt “guilty.”
David Odisho/Getty Images
“He said when he was called as a witness he tried to answer the questions honestly but that the prosecutors tried to make everybody look bad (in the company),” Evans recalled in an email to Holmes’ attorneys about their interaction. “He said that the government made things sound worse than they were when he was up on the stand during his testimony. He said he felt like he had done something wrong. And that this was weighing on him, He said he was having trouble sleeping.”In another of Holmes’ motions for a new trial, she says the prosecution portrayed her relationship with Balwani differently in their respective trials, to her detriment.In the final motion, Holmes said she was denied emails showing prosecutors failed to take appropriate steps to preserve a Theranos database that she claims would have helped her defense, even though the government furnished these materials when Balwani was on trial.
Holmes notched a small victory when the presiding judge ordered an evidentiary hearing regarding Rosendorff’s testimony and appearance at her home. This hearing meant that Holmes’ sentencing was postponed from October 17, 2022, to November 18 of that year.
Dai Sugano/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images
Source: Business Insider
The evidentiary hearing proved useless to Holmes, though, as witness Rosendorff said he stood by his initial testimony and only went to her home because he was “distressed” at the idea of Holmes’ child growing up without a mother.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
“At all times the government encouraged me to tell the truth and only the truth,” Rosendorff clarified at the hearing.”I don’t want to help Ms. Holmes,” Rosendorff added. “The only person that can help her is herself. She needs to pay her debt to society.”
In the end, Holmes’ friends and family didn’t get their wish. On November 18, 2022, Holmes was sentenced to 135 months, or 11.25 years, in prison with three years of supervised release beginning on April 27. “I stand before you taking responsibility for Theranos. I loved Theranos, it was my life’s work,” Holmes said through tears at the hearing.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Source: KRON, Insider
In February 2023, a court filing revealed Holmes recently gave birth to a second child. She also asked the judge to delay the start of her prison sentence to allow her to remain free while she appeals her conviction.
Holmes in a federal court in San Jose, California, on November 18, 2022.
Nic Coury/AP
“Ms. Holmes has deep ties to the community: She is the mother of two very young children; she has close relationships with family and friends, many of who submitted letters at sentencing vouching for her good character; and she volunteers with a rape crisis and counseling organization,” the filing said.Source: Insider
In May, Holmes was again denied her request to remain free while she appeals her conviction, and a judge ordered her to report to prison May 30. She and Balwani were also ordered to pay $452 million in restitution to victims of Theranos’ fraud.
Nick Otto/AFP via Getty Images
Source: Insider, Insider
In the time since she’s been incarcerated, her prison term has been shortened. Previously, Holmes had her sentenced shortened to roughly 9.5 years compared to her original 11.25-year sentence.
Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, left, is escorted by prison officials into a federal women’s prison camp on Tuesday, May 30, 2023, in Bryan, Texas.
Michael Wyke/Associated Press
The Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on how Holmes’ release date was calculated.Release date calculations typically take into account factors like a person’s surrender date, jail-time credit, the completion of substance abuse programs, and good behavior.Source: InsiderMaya Kosoff, Paige Leskin, and Áine Cain contributed to earlier versions of this story.
Holmes is still serving her time in Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas. Holmes’s appeal is scheduled to go before a federal appeals court on June 11.
Elizabeth Holmes hugging her father, Christian Holmes IV as her mother, Noel Holmes, looks on.
Philip Pacheco/Getty Images
In May 2023, a court denied Holmes’ motion to remain free on bail while she appealed her trial, remanding her to Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas, a minimum security women’s prison. Federal appeals courts in San Francisco will hear opening arguments in her appeal and that of her co-defendant, Sunny Balwani, on June 11.
