Now-Worthless Theranos Investments Reportedly Cost Walton Family, Betsy DeVos Hundreds of Millions
I wish every silicon valley startup existed solely to bankrupt millionaires and billionaires.
Wealthy elites sank more than $600 million into Theranos, the rapidly flatlining blood-testing startup, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.
The startup’s CEO and founder Elizabeth Homes, once dubbed “the next Steve Jobs,” brought in multi-million dollar investments from big names like Education Secretary Besty DeVos and the Walton family. Now, newly unsealed documents, made public in the course of a fraud suit against Theranos, have revealed the dire finances of a company plagued by scandals, layoffs, and lawsuits. The WSJ says the top-dollar investments are now “essentially worthless.”
Theranos’ biggest investors reportedly include the Walton family, which put in $150 million; Rupert Murdoch, the largest individual investor, who put in $121 million; Betsy DeVos, who invested $100 million; and the Cox family, of Cox Media, which invested $100 million. The documents do not include the identities of shareholders or investors who gave money before 2013.
The fraud suit was brought by venture capitalist Robert Colman, who invested $15 million in Theranos in 2013. Theranos is facing multiple fraud suits from investors, all claiming Holmes misled investors on the core mission of Theranos: micro-sample blood testing. The Securities and Exchange Commission launched a civil fraud investigation against Holmes, ending in a $500,000 penalty and 10-year-ban from holding an executive role in a public company.
more: https://gizmodo.com/now-worthless-theranos-investments-reportedly-cost-walt-1825775178
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I followed Theranos when it first started making news as a well funded venture. But I was less than impressed with Holmes' interviews. It all seemed rather too glib and too simple. I have some biochem/biomed background, and I reasoned that if it was all as simple as Holmes seemed to be saying, one of the major diagnostic companies would have jumped on it already. When I found out that she was very popular with the wealthy conservative investor set, I assumed Holmes was also expressing conservative viewpoints in her presentations to them, although I confess I never say any records of such.
When the FDA started raising a fuss about Theranos it came out that scientifically the promises were questionable - it requires more than a drop of blood to do many diagnostic tests, and Theranos apparently had nothing in their bag of tricks to get around that hard fact. No doubt the reservations expressed by diagnostic scientists all along were dismissed as liberal snowflake talk, or something.
I surmise that Holmes figured they could use some sort of DNA analysis to do the diagnostics. Unfortunately there's a big difference between have a genetic marker for something and actually having the condition, not to mention all the health conditions that have little to no genetic link.
Caveat investor, but at least the ones who are out all those millions are conservatives 
Poetic Justice wrapped in karma! 
Elizabeth Homes is my new hero! Anybody who screws over the 1% is OK by me. 