Partner of Elizabeth Holmes raising millions for blood testing startup

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes' partner Billy Evans has been raising millions for a new startup involving AI to make a product that will be used for blood testing and other uses, according to a report from NPR.

The upcoming startup, which has not officially launched, is called Haemanthus, which is Greek for "blood flower." This comes as Holmes is serving an 11-year prison sentence after she misled investors about Theranos, a claimed blood-testing company. Theranos claimed to have breakthrough technology in laboratory science before it was discovered that its offering was faulty.

Holmes has been providing advice to Evans from prison, according to sources that spoke to NPR, and there are around a dozen people on the startup team. According to paperwork filed in Delaware with the company, some of the employees previously worked with Evans at Luminar Technologies, a company that deals with autonomous vehicles.

During her four-month trial, Holmes maintained that she did not commit any crimes. However, evidence presented by the government as well as witnesses led to her conviction of purposefully deceiving investors for the company. Her conviction was upheld in an appeals court last Thursday.

When Haemanthus was contacted regarding Evans being Holmes’ partner, the startup wrote on X, “We're Haemanthus. Yes, our CEO, Billy Evans, is Elizabeth Holmes' partner. Skepticism is rational. We must clear a higher bar. When [the New York Times] contacted us, we invited them: see our lab, tech, and team. They declined. The headline was already written.”

“So we will communicate directly. The unfiltered truth. No intermediaries. We prefer to build first, talk later. The science, when ready, will stand on its own merits. But we feel compelled to introduce ourselves because of recent media coverage. This is not Theranos 2.0. Theranos attempted to miniaturize existing tests. Our approach is fundamentally different. We use light to read the complete molecular story in biological fluids, seeing patterns current tests can’t detect. Not an improvement. A different paradigm.”

The company went onto say that Holmes has no involvement with Haemanthus. In February, she told reporters that when she gets out of prison, she plans to start her career back up in biotech and that while she has been in prison, she has been crafting patents for new technology.