Rob Copeland reports that Billy Evans's blood testing startup Haemanthus raised only about $3m and has a single identified investor, a friend who runs a tapas restaurant in Austin.
Copeland says Evans's USDA letter, presented as proof of lighter regulation, was rejected by the USDA, which said it did not mean that.
John Carreyrou argues Holmes knew she and Evans would profit from the film, and that her fraud became full-fledged in fall 2013 when Theranos went live in Walgreens with modified Siemens machines.
Holmes's Partner Billy Evans Is Building a Blood Testing Startup
Funding and deals
Haemanthus. Billy Evans' pet blood testing startup, pitching tests at about $1 versus $500 at a vet, has raised roughly $3m. Jim Breyer's firm passed.
SpaceX and Tesla. Elon Musk says SpaceX is forming committees of independent directors to explore a merger with Tesla, recusing himself as a conflicted party.
Guest interviews
Rob Copeland, finance reporter at The New York Times. Copeland found Evans charming but silent about Holmes, who is absent from the Haemanthus deck despite years of filming. Evans sent him an October 2024 USDA letter as proof of lighter regulation, and the USDA said it meant no such thing. Copeland calls the company real only in having raised money, notes its one known investor runs an Austin tapas restaurant, and says it still worked from a house last year.
Erin Griffith, technology reporter at The New York Times. Griffith sees the Evans relationship echoing Holmes' past with Sunny Balwani, though she finds it genuine. Breyer's on-record pass is rare because investors fear looking unfriendly to founders. The only fraud-convicted founder she finds backed again is Trevor Milton, pardoned by Donald Trump, so a Holmes comeback would hinge on a pardon.
John Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood. Carreyrou says the film went viral and Knopf printed another 10,000 copies of Bad Blood. He says the device in the film is the mini lab, which never had a test validated, while the Edison ran only 12 tests and every result was voided. He blames Holmes over Balwani given her roughly 90% voting control, dates the full fraud to the fall 2013 Walgreens launch, and calls her 11-year, 3-month sentence harsh though she never took responsibility.
News
CoreWeave stock falls under $70bn debt. The AI compute lessor carries about $70bn in liabilities across 51 data centers and now pays twice as much to service debt. Copeland and Griffith tie its fate to Anthropic's expected IPO.
Joel Kaplan leaves Meta after fifteen years. Max Read says the former Scalia clerk and Kavanaugh friend helped Meta handle criticism from the right by nudging it rightward. Former Goldman Sachs banker Dina Powell McCormick replaces him.
Ken Griffin says markets are in an AI bubble. Copeland cites the hedge fund investor's warning this week as AI companies talk of borrowing as much as $10tn for the buildout.
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