Oh Great, Elizabeth Holmes Is Back—Now with AI
- Rich Washburn
- Jun 4
- 2 min read
Just when we thought Silicon Valley had closed the book on its most infamous cautionary tale, Elizabeth Holmes is back in the headlines. Still serving an 11-year sentence for one of the most audacious frauds in tech history, she’s reportedly spending her time behind bars writing patents and plotting her next act. This time, she says, it’s all about affordable healthcare—and artificial intelligence. Because of course it is.
If that already sounds like satire, hang on.
Her partner, Billy Evans—a hotel heir with no medical background—is now raising millions for a new biotech startup called Hemanthus. The pitch? A sleek little machine that can scan your blood, urine, or saliva and use AI to diagnose illness. It’s Theranos 2.0, just with lasers and deep learning. And pets. They’re starting with pets. Because nothing says “we’ve learned from past mistakes” like jumping back into diagnostics with a slightly different audience and the exact same playbook.
To be fair, Raman spectroscopy is real. AI-driven diagnostics? Also real. The science has come a long way in the last decade. But none of that is the issue here.
The issue is her.
Because you don’t get to LARP as Steve Jobs—complete with the black turtlenecks, the speaking cadence, and the dead-eyed TED Talk delivery—lie to regulators, fake test results, endanger lives, and walk away with “but I still believe in the dream.” Holmes didn’t just fail. She built a billion-dollar empire on deception, then watched it crumble while maintaining the world's most unsettling cosplay of a trans-Steve Jobs wannabe.
And now she’s trying again—with AI as the new magic wand.
You have to wonder: is this a genuine pivot into real science? Or just another narrative pivot, weaponizing the hype cycle? Given the timing, it’s hard not to imagine Holmes squatting at a prison kiosk, watching the AI boom unfold, asking ChatGPT how to re-enter the health tech space with “vision” and “resilience,” while the chatbot dutifully affirms her every delusion. At this point, the only thing she’s successfully engineered is her own myth.
The irony? You don’t need Holmes for any of this to work. Legit researchers are already using AI with spectroscopy to detect cancer with staggering accuracy. The actual innovation is happening—quietly, rigorously, and without the shadow of scandal. The last thing that field needs is a comeback tour from someone who turned blood testing into performance art.
Sure, maybe Hemanthus has real potential. But it’s going to be a hard sell when the ghost of Theranos is baked into your brand DNA. Because in tech, trust isn’t just a soft skill—it’s infrastructure. And Holmes burned the whole thing to the ground.
So yeah, maybe the science is better now. Maybe the pitch is cleaner. But the messenger? Still radioactive.
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