In 2015, Forbes named Elizabeth Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire, thanks to her successful business and numerous patents. Despite all of her accomplishments, she was named one of Fortune’s 19 Most Disappointing Leaders.
As a result of Holmes’s leadership, numerous lawsuits and investigations of her business resulted in a significant increase in her fortune. You can read about Elizabeth Holmes’s fortune, celebrity, and notoriety as a business tycoon in the linked article below.
Elizabeth Holmes’s Net Worth
American entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes has a negative $226 million in her bank account. The now-defunct healthcare technology business Theranos, which Holmes co-founded and oversaw, is responsible for her notoriety, a brief paper riches, and a criminal sentence. The stock price increased after the corporation made statements claiming to have transformed blood testing.
Several probes, however, uncovered evidence that the firm was misleading investors with fabricated claims. After the story broke, both Holmes and her ex-boyfriend/Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani were charged with crimes and Holmes’ company went bankrupt.
Elizabeth had a paper net worth of $4.5 billion at the peak valuation of the corporation, which was $9 billion. That made Elizabeth the youngest entrepreneur to ever amass a billion dollars on her own.
As the crisis unfolded, she had little choice but to resign from Theranos and give up a huge chunk of equity in the company. Years later, Elizabeth appeared in court in Arizona, claiming she could not afford legal representation.
The Walton family, the Devos family, Henry Kissinger, and Rupert Murdoch were among the early investors in Theranos, which raised a total of $945 million.
A jury found Elizabeth Holmes guilty on all four charges of wire fraud on January 3, 2022.
Elizabeth received a sentence of 135 months in prison on November 18, 2022. This is slightly over 11 years.
On May 17, 2023, the court ordered Elizabeth and Sunny to pay $452,000,000 to their victims. The sum is divided evenly, with each participant receiving $226 million.
The Visionary Behind Theranos’ Rise and Walgreens Partnership
Holmes established Real-Time Cures in Palo Alto, California in 2003 with the goal of making healthcare more accessible to the general public. Fearful of needles, she looked for alternatives to full blood draws so she could get her bloodwork done.
Following the introduction of venture funders by her former Stanford advisor Channing Robertson, Holmes rebranded her company as Theranos. Holmes, an Apple fanboy, was known to dress like Jobs by donning black turtleneck sweaters and adopting Jobs’ distinctive baritone voice.
Ending the year 2004 with roughly $6 million in venture money, Holmes saw her company grow to almost $92 million in assets by the end of 2010. Holmes managed Theranos for a period without a website or press releases.
Finally, in September of 2013, the business collaborated with Walgreens to establish blood sample collection stations within the pharmacy chain’s locations. The following year, Holmes and Theranos received unprecedented amounts of media coverage, with Holmes landing on the covers of dozens of publications.
Elizabeth Holmes: The Rise to Billionaire Status and Illusionary Wealth
When the value of Theranos reached $9 billion, Elizabeth was declared the youngest-ever self-made billionaire. She had kept half of the company’s equity shares at that moment, giving her a $4.5 billion paper fortune at the time.
Exploring the Wealth of Prominent Figures: Unveiling the Net Worth of Noteworthy Personalities
- The Business of Britney Spears: Examining Her Net Worth
- Unmasking Chris Tucker’s Net Worth: From Blockbuster Success to Financial Challenges
Theranos: Exposé, Lawsuits, and the Fall of a Biotech Startup
The Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou conducted a covert investigation into Theranos after getting a tip from a medical expert who was wary of the company’s blood-testing equipment. Holmes, upon realizing this, launched an attack against Carreyrou and threatened the WSJ with both financial and legal ruin.
Nevertheless, in October 2015, Carreyrou revealed his findings, which showed that Theranos was providing false test results using commercial machines built by other manufacturers. After Medicare and Medicaid Services, investigators found problems at a Theranos facility in Newark, California, in January 2016, CMS issued a formal prohibition on Holmes from owning or running a clinical blood-testing laboratory for two years.
In 2017, The State of Arizona launched a lawsuit against Theranos and Holmes for allegedly lying about the accuracy of the business’s blood tests, leading to additional allegations against the company and Holmes. As a result, almost all Theranos shareholders rejected legal action and accepted preferred stock instead.
With over $700 million in investor funds, Holmes and former Theranos president Ramesh Balwani were charged with fraud by the SEC in March of 2018. The corporation was also found to have misrepresented its income and the use of its technologies by the US Department of Defense.
As part of the settlement, Holmes had to give up voting control of Theranos and was barred from serving as an officer in a publicly traded business for a period of ten years. September of 2018 marked the official end of Theranos as a company.
The tweet below shows Elizabeth Holmes’s lawsuit:
Elizabeth Holmes owes over $25 million to Theranos, lawsuit says https://t.co/omqIjTD9Hn
— CNBC (@CNBC) March 18, 2023
Theranos: A Financial Downfall Unveiled in Court
The fact that Theranos was losing money year after year wouldn’t be revealed until Elizabeth’s criminal trial. The corporation incurred a loss of $16.2 million in 2010. The business lost $27.7 million that year. It was $57 million in 2012.
The business lost a total of $92 million in 2013, or around $2 million per week. At the end of 2014, Theranos owed $376 million. The company’s entire revenue was only $14,000 in 2014.
If you would like to stay informed about the net worth and real estate investments of notable individuals, you are invited to follow us on Twitter for regular updates.
