Elizabeth Holmes continues to be a pop culture fascination and cautionary tale of hubris among tech start-up founders.
The former CEO of the health technology company is the subject of the new documentary, “You Can See Everything,” which hits theaters on Oct. 16. The trailer for the film went viral in September for its eerie interactions between Holmes and comedian Nathan Fielder as well as its depiction of Holmes’ family life with partner Billy Evans and their two young children.
The film is just the latest project involving the saga of Holmes, which has previously spawned an HBO documentary and a scripted Hulu series.
Here’s what to know about her story and the new film.
Holmes dropped out of Stanford University at 19 years old in 2003 to start Theranos, a Silicon Valley company that promised to revolutionize healthcare.
The company’s stated goal was to use technology to run hundreds of blood tests using only a simple pinprick of blood in a proprietary machine Theranos called the Edison.
Holmes raised nearly $1 billion from several prominent investors, including Oracle founder Larry Ellison, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and heirs of the Walton family that owns Walmart. By 2014, Theranos was valued at $9 billion.
She became a darling of Silicon Valley, appearing on a 2014 cover of Forbes that billed her as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire due to her 50% stake in Theranos. In 2015, she was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people.
The company’s image began to unravel after a series of investigative articles by The Wall Street Journal in 2015 raised serious questions about whether the Theranos technology worked. The saga was also detailed in the 2018 book “Bad Blood” by WSJ journalist John Carreyrou.
Theranos was using existing commercially available blood-analysis technology and repurposing it to run its blood tests, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A former Theranos lab associate who became a whistleblower testified at Holmes’ trial that the Edison machines routinely failed quality control tests and that their results were about as accurate as “flipping a coin,” according to CNBC.
An investigation into the company resulted in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing civil fraud charges against Theranos, Holmes and former president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.
In January 2022, Holmes was convicted by a jury in a California court of four federal charges of wire fraud for misrepresenting to investors what the Theranos technology could do and how widely its Edison machines were being adopted.
Prosecutors alleged that she duped investors into pouring money into a product she knew was faulty. Holmes denied the accusation during the trial.
“At the time, you were not worried people would be given an inaccurate impression?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Leach asked her during the trial.
“I was not,” Holmes said.
Holmes was acquitted of charges of defrauding patients and one count of conspiracy.
In May 2023, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila ordered her to pay $452 million in restitution to the victims of her crimes.
Yes, Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in federal prison in November 2022.
Balwani was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison and three years of probation after being convicted of 12 counts of fraud.
Holmes, 42, has been serving her sentence at a minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas, but she is expected to be let out of prison into a halfway house.
She is scheduled to be transferred to a halfway house next year, according to one of her victims. Alan Eisenman, who invested about $1.2 million in Theranos, told NBC News on Sept. 24 that he was notified that she is to be transferred to the Austin Transitional Center in an unincorporated community that borders Austin, Texas.
The Department of Justice is required by law to notify victims of crime of case developments through letters and emails.
Her scheduled release date is Feb. 22, 2030, after some reductions in her sentence.
“You Can See Everything” is the latest film involving Holmes, and the most intimate.
Amanda Seyfried won an Emmy for outstanding lead actress for her portrayal of Holmes in the 2022 scripted series “The Dropout” on Hulu.
Holmes was also the subject of the 2019 HBO documentary “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.”
In “You Can See Everything,” Holmes grants comedian Nathan Fielder and filmmaker Lance Oppenheim extraordinary access to her life in the months leading up to when she entered prison.
She had a son with partner Billy Evans in 2021 and then gave birth to a daughter in 2023, shortly before she began serving her prison sentence.
The documentary trailer shows Holmes maintaining that she did nothing wrong and reveals that Fielder moved into her home while filming.
“I think this is the moment in time to capture this story before I’m gone,” she seemingly tells the comedian at one point.
Evans also appears in the documentary and answers questions about his life with Holmes.
There are also uncomfortable moments between Fielder and Holmes, including one in which he muses about whether he can trust her.
“That’s because I don’t have anything to hide,” she tells him.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
