The Rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, the Youngest Female Billionaire

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Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, was once the world’s youngest female billionaire, but her empire came crashing down. Here’s a brief overview of her rise and fall.

In 2003, at just 19 years old, Holmes dropped out of Stanford University and founded Theranos, a company that promised to revolutionize blood testing by using only a few drops of blood from a finger prick. Over the next few years, Holmes raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and grew her company to a valuation of nearly $10 billion.

Holmes became a media darling and a symbol of female entrepreneurship, appearing on the cover of magazines like Forbes and Fortune. She also attracted high-profile investors, including Rupert Murdoch and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and even landed a deal with Walgreens to put her blood-testing devices in their stores.

However, the company’s claims began to unravel in 2015 when a Wall Street Journal investigation exposed serious flaws in Theranos’ technology and practices. The company’s blood-testing devices were inaccurate, and the samples had to be sent to traditional labs for testing. Holmes and her company were accused of fraud, and she was charged with multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

In 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Holmes and her former partner Sunny Balwani with massive fraud, and the company was forced to shut down. Holmes now faces up to 20 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. The fall of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes serves as a cautionary tale for the dangers of unchecked ambition and a reminder of the importance of ethical business practices.

RE-reported from the story originally published in Business Insider India