Theranos was the health-tech startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes that collapsed after a major scandal.
Holmes founded the company in 2003, initially naming it Real-Time Cures, while she was a 19-year-old Stanford student. She later changed the name to Theranos, combining “therapy” and “diagnosis.” The company claimed its technology could run many blood tests quickly using only a tiny amount of blood from a finger prick.
Theranos attracted more than $700 million from investors and reached a reported valuation of about $9 billion at its peak. Its claims unraveled after whistleblowers and investigative reporting, especially John Carreyrou’s 2015 Wall Street Journal investigation, revealed that the company often relied on conventional laboratory machines and produced unreliable results.
Regulatory investigations, lawsuits, and fraud charges followed. Theranos ceased operations in 2018. Holmes was convicted in 2022 on four fraud-related counts involving investors and was later sentenced to more than 11 years in prison. The company’s story is often confused with ordinary startup failure, but Theranos became a landmark case involving alleged deception in medical testing and venture finance.