Billy Evans, the partner of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, has started a new blood-testing company called Haemanthus. Holmes is currently serving an 11-year federal prison sentence for defrauding investors. While Evans has denied that the new company is “Theranos 2.0,” not everybody is sold on the idea. Here we’ll discuss more about the startup and whether the company is all that different from Theranos.

Holmes’ Partner Finds New Diagnostic Company

Haemanthus, which means “blood flower” in Greek, is a diagnostics company working on a tool to scan blood, urine, and saliva to identify potential diseases. For context, Theranos was a failed blood diagnostics company that claimed to be able to detect various diseases with just one drop of blood (which it could not do).

Haemanthus has a patent for its Raman spectroscopy system, which uses chemical analysis to diagnose some types of cancer and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The company is reportedly building a small rectangular device containing a door and a digital display screen, similar to Theranos’ device. In its post, Haemanthus said it is “combining photonics and AI to detect disease earlier and with unprecedented precision,” while emphasizing that its “innovation” is “potentially life-saving.”

Haemanthus has confirmed that it would begin with veterinary medicines instead of testing the devices on humans. It justified the move, saying the approach is not only cheaper but also “practical and meaningful.” The company’s post added, “It validates our technology, helps animals who can’t describe symptoms, and builds the foundation for human applications.”

https://twitter.com/Glenn_Mallo/status/192129295172090618

Haemanthus has Already Raised Millions of Dollars

According to reports, Evans has already raised around $3.5 million for the startup and is looking to raise another $15 million, with the eventual goal of raising around $50 million overall. The projected fundraising plans are a fraction of the $1.4 billion that Theranos raised in its short history.

At least on the surface, Haemanthus is not very different from Holmes’ company, which was looking to revolutionize the diagnostic market by using only a single drop of blood for multiple tests. The testing device that Haemanthus is building is also reminiscent of the Theranos machines.

Notably, Holmes has been filing for new patents and, in an interview earlier this year, admitted that she plans to enter the biotech space again after the release.

Holmes Is Serving an 11-Year Sentence for Defrauding Investors

Theranos was backed by marquee investors like the Walton family (who is behind Walmart) and Rupert Murdoch. Holmes became the youngest self-made billionaire in the US in 2014, and in 2015, Time magazine named her among the 100 most influential people in the world. At its peak that year, Theranos was valued at around $10 billion.

However, things took a different turn in 2018 as federal prosecutors went after her for duping investors to put money into her startup, which never really worked.

In summary, Judge Edward Davila said that federal prosecutors had reason to believe between 2010 and 2015, both Holmes and her partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani made “false statements regarding the capabilities of Theranos’s proprietary analyzer, its financial revenue streams, and device demonstrations, as well as misrepresenting Theranos’s relationships and interactions with Walgreens, the US Department of Defense, the Food and Drug Administration, pharmaceutical companies, and research institutions.”

Holmes, meanwhile, never admitted to any guilt and has maintained her innocence while she serves an 11-year prison sentence.

Haemanthus Emphasizes It’s Not “Theranos 2.0”

On its part, Haemanthus admits that there are bound to be concerns over its founder. In a post on X, it said, “We’re Haemanthus. Yes, our CEO, Billy Evans, is Elizabeth Holmes’ partner. Skepticism is rational. We must clear a higher bar.”

The company stressed, “This is not Theranos 2.0. Theranos attempted to miniaturize existing tests. Our approach is fundamentally different. We use light to read the complete molecular story in biological fluids, seeing patterns current tests can’t detect. Not an improvement. A different paradigm.”

Evans has fathered two children with Holmes, and reports suggest that she has been advising the startup from prison. Haemanthus has, however, denied that Holmes, whom the SEC barred from leading public companies, is involved with the company.

Lashing out at the New York Times and NPR for suggesting Holmes’ involvement with the company, it added, “Setting the record straight. Elizabeth Holmes has zero involvement in Haemanthus. We’ve learned from her company’s mistakes, but she has no role, now or future.”

The company said that when the New York Times contacted it for the story, it invited them to see the lab and the technology, but the publication refused.

Is Haemanthus Another Theranos in the Making?

Despite Haemanthus going the extra mile to emphasize that it has nothing to do with Theranos and Holmes, there are many skeptics who refuse to buy the story. To begin with, there is an uncanny similarity in the nomenclature, as even Theranos was a made-up Greek word. Like Theranos, Haemanthus is promising a breakthrough device and is looking to go a step further by adding artificial intelligence (AI) to its mechanism. The two companies are simply far too similar to dismiss the criticism without more evidence to the contrary.

As the New York Times report says, “A photo provided to potential investors of the start-up’s prototype bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Theranos’s infamous blood-testing machine, variously known as the Edison or miniLab.”

Overall, it is too early to judge whether Haemanthus is “Theranos 2.0” in the making. However, given Evans’ association with Holmes, the comparisons to Theranos, which would go down as one of the biggest corporate frauds in history, are not unfounded.