Elizabeth Anne Holmes (born February 3, 1984) is an American biotechnology entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud in connection with her blood-testing company, Theranos.

[3][4] In 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the United States on the basis of a $9-billion valuation of her company.

[5] In the following year, as revelations of fraud about Theranos's claims began to surface, Forbes revised its estimate of Holmes's net worth to zero,[6] and Fortune named her in its feature article on "The World's 19 Most Disappointing Leaders".

[7] The decline of Theranos began in 2015, when a series of journalistic and regulatory investigations revealed doubts about the company's claims and whether Holmes had misled investors and the government.

In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Theranos, Holmes, and former Theranos chief operating officer (COO) Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani with raising $700 million from investors through a fraud involving false or exaggerated claims about the accuracy of the company's blood-testing technology; Holmes settled the charges by paying a $500,000 fine, returning 18.9 million shares to the company, relinquishing her voting control of Theranos, and accepting a ten-year ban from serving as an officer or director of a public company.

[8] Holmes and Balwani jointly ran the company with a "dysfunctional corporate culture" of "secrecy and fear" according to employees.

[9] Following the collapse of Theranos, Holmes started dating hotel heir William "Billy" Evans, whom she married in 2019 and had two children with (born in 2021 and 2023).

[22] After the end of her freshman year, Holmes worked in a laboratory at the Genome Institute of Singapore and tested for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) through the collection of blood samples with syringes.

[25] In March 2004, she dropped out of Stanford's School of Engineering and used her tuition money as seed funding for a consumer healthcare technology company.

[24] During 2015, Holmes established agreements with Cleveland Clinic, Capital Blue Cross, and AmeriHealth Caritas to use Theranos technology.

When Holmes learned of the investigation, she initiated a campaign through her lawyer David Boies to stop Carreyrou from publishing, which included legal and financial threats against both the Journal and the whistleblowers.

[44] Carreyrou continued to report problems with the company and Holmes's conduct in a series of articles and, in 2018, published a book titled Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, detailing his investigation of Theranos.

[45][46] Holmes denied all the claims, calling the Journal a "tabloid" and promising the company would publish data on the accuracy of its tests.

"[49] In January 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a warning letter to Theranos after an inspection of its Newark, California, laboratory uncovered irregularities with staff proficiency, procedures, and equipment.

[50] CMS regulators proposed a two-year ban on Holmes from owning or operating a certified clinical laboratory after the company had not fixed problems in its California lab in March 2016.

[51] On The Today Show, Holmes said she was "devastated we did not catch and fix these issues faster" and said the lab would be rebuilt with help from a new scientific and medical advisory board.

[55] The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also ordered the company to cease use of its Capillary Tube Nanotainer device, one of its core inventions.

In April 2017, the company settled the lawsuit by agreeing to refund the cost of the tests to consumers, and to pay $225,000 in civil fines and attorney fees, for a total of $4.65 million.

[59][60] In March 2018, the SEC charged Holmes and Theranos's former president, Ramesh Balwani, with fraud by taking more than $700 million from investors while advertising a false product.

On September 5, 2018, the company announced that it had begun the process of formally dissolving, with its remaining cash and assets to be distributed to its creditors.

[76] At trial, Holmes testified on her own behalf for seven days, claiming among other things that she was misled by her staff about the technology, and that Balwani held sway over her during the romantic relationship they had and which was still ongoing when the alleged criminal acts happened.

[77][78][79] The case's evidence outlined Holmes's role in faked demonstrations, falsified validation reports, misleading claims about contracts, and overstated financials at Theranos.

[75][2] On November 18, 2022, Davila sentenced Holmes to 11+1⁄4 years in federal prison and ordered her and Balwani jointly to pay $452 million in restitution to the victims of the fraud.

Her lawyers argued that Davila had committed legal errors by, among other things, allowing the prosecution to introduce certain government reports and expert witness analysis, by restricting their cross-examination of former Theranos laboratory director Adam Rosendorff, and by excluding some of Balwani's testimony.

[91] In 2015, she helped to draft and pass a law in Arizona to let people obtain and pay for lab tests without requiring insurance or healthcare provider approval, while misrepresenting the accuracy and effectiveness of the Theranos device.

[111] In the same year actor Jared Leto presented her with a Glamour Award[112] and then-US President Barack Obama named her as Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship.

Although Balwani did not officially join Theranos until 2009, when he was given the title of chief operating officer, he was advising Holmes behind the scenes from the company's inception.

[77] However, she also testified that Balwani had not forced her to make the false statements to investors, business partners, journalists and company directors that had been described in the case.

[136][137] Holmes and Evans have not directly confirmed whether the two are legally married, and several sources continue to refer to him as her "partner" rather than her husband.

[140] Holmes was accused of conceiving a second child, according to a court filing from February 2023, as a strategy for delaying the start of her prison term.