Theranos
- π¦Became a unicorn2014
- πPeak valuation$9 Billion β14
- πBecame a UnitardJun 2016
- πΈLast valuationWiped out
Total raised averaged per day over approximately 13.0 years from founding to bankruptcy or shutdown. This is not measured cash burn. Methodology
The rise & fall
9 moments Β· 2003β2023The key moments.
The story
π Unhinged #2In the fall of 2003, Elizabeth Holmes, a 19-year-old Stanford sophomore, sat down in the office of her chemical engineering professor, Channing Robertson, and said, "Let's start a company."
"I knew she was different," Robertson told Fortune in 2014. Her idea was a wearable patch that would deliver a drug and monitor the patient's blood.
By June 2014 her company, Theranos, had raised more than $400 million and was valued at more than $9 billion. It offered blood tests, drawn by finger stick, at 21 Walgreens stores, Fortune reported.
A federal appeals court later summarized the trial evidence. In November 2013, Theranos president Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani told Holmes the company was down to $15 million in cash. Of some 300 assays Theranos developed, twelve were ever run on the Edison, its own device. In 2015 Theranos reported $1,944,948 in total income to the IRS.
The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2015 that at the end of 2014 the Edison had handled a small fraction of the tests, citing four former employees. Theranos said it had not exaggerated its achievements and declined to give numbers. In March 2018 Holmes settled SEC fraud charges without admitting or denying them, agreeing to pay $500,000. That September, Theranos moved to dissolve, Fortune reported. "We are now out of time," chief executive David Taylor wrote to stockholders. Unsecured creditors were owed at least $60 million.
A jury convicted Holmes in January 2022 on four counts of defrauding investors, acquitted her on four counts involving patients, and could not agree on three more involving investors. "Failure is normal," Judge Edward Davila said at her sentencing that November. "Failure by fraud is not ok." He gave her 135 months, later cut to 123. In May 2023 he held Holmes and Balwani jointly and severally liable for $452 million in restitution. Balwani had been convicted on all 12 counts.
The appeals court that upheld both defendants' convictions in February 2025 called the vision they sold "nothing more than a mirage." As of September 2026 Holmes was in a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, with release scheduled for February 22, 2030, NBC News reported. "When I finally connected with what Elizabeth fundamentally is," Robertson told Fortune in 2014, "I realized that I could have just as well been looking into the eyes of a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates."
How it happened
Theranos claimed its Edison device could run comprehensive blood tests from a few drops of finger-prick blood, reaching a ~$9B valuation in 2014 and making founder Elizabeth Holmes a paper billionaire.
A 2015 Wall Street Journal investigation reported that the Edison handled only a small fraction of the company's tests, with the rest run on other makers' machines. The SEC charged Holmes with fraud, Forbes cut its estimate of her stake to nothing in 2016, and Theranos dissolved in September 2018; Holmes was later convicted and imprisoned.
Source: WSJ investigation; Holmes convicted 2022, imprisoned 2023 (DOJ)
Founder
- Elizabeth HolmesFounder & CEONo public profile matched
Disclosed investors (15)
Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.
* Lead in a funding round Β· Crunchbase β Β· 2026-10-13 Β· Methodology Β· Leaderboard
