Bill Evans, a partner of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, has launched a new startup in the same field, Haemanthus, and is aiming to raise more than $50 million in funding. Haemanthus is developing a device that will diagnose diseases using blood, saliva, and urine samples.
The prototype of Haemanthus resembles Theranos’s famous Edison (miniLab) device: rectangular in shape, with a door and a digital display. The company has already raised $3.5 million from friends and family and plans to raise another $15 million from outside investors by spring 2025.
Haemanthus bills itself as “the diagnostic of the future” and plans to create a wearable version of the device within three years and with an investment of $70 million. However, the investor presentations do not mention Bill Evans’ relationship with Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes, on the other hand, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding investors.
Theranos scandal
Theranos is a biotechnology company founded in 2003 by Elizabeth Holmes. The company promised to develop a device that could quickly and cheaply perform various medical tests from a small blood sample.
As a result of the investigation, it turned out that the results offered by Theranos' device were unreliable and based more on marketing and PR than on the company's technological achievements. In 2021, Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of crimes such as deceiving investors and making false statements and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
