Episode 1075
Elizabeth Holmes
Sun, 2020-Apr-12 01:51 UTC
Length - 3:37
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Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.
With 212,703 views on Saturday, 11 April 2020 our article of the day is Elizabeth Holmes.
Elizabeth Anne Holmes (born February 3, 1984) is an American businesswoman who founded and was the CEO of Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company. The company soared in valuation after she and others claimed the company had revolutionized blood testing by developing testing methods that could use surprisingly small volumes of blood, such as from a fingerprick, and also claimed these tests could be performed very rapidly using small automated devices the company had developed. By 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America, on the basis of a $9 billion valuation of her company. In the following year, following revelations of potential fraud about its claims, Forbes had revised its published estimate of her net worth to zero, and Fortune had named Holmes one of the "World's Most Disappointing Leaders". The decline of Theranos began in 2015, when a series of journalistic and regulatory investigations revealed doubts about the company's technology claims and whether Holmes had misled investors and the government. In 2018, the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Theranos and Holmes with deceiving investors by "massive fraud" through 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 shares to the company, relinquishing her voting control of Theranos, and being barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for ten years. In June 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Holmes and former Theranos chief operating officer Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for distributing blood tests with falsified results to consumers. A trial is set to begin in August 2020. The credibility of Theranos was in part interpreted as an effect of Holmes's personal connections and ability to recruit the support of influential people including Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, George Shultz, James Mattis, and Betsy DeVos. Holmes was in a relationship with her chief operating officer, Ramesh Balwani, and after the demise of Theranos, she married hotel heir Billy Evans. Holmes's career, the rise and dissolution of her company, and the subsequent fallout are the subject of a book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by the Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, and an HBO documentary feature film, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:51 UTC on Sunday, 12 April 2020.
For the full current version of the article, see Elizabeth Holmes on Wikipedia.
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