Billy Evans insists Haemanthus is “not Theranos 2.0.” Unfortunately for him, the company wants to bring blood, urine and saliva testing into the home while his wife is Elizabeth Holmes.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for fraud tied to a blood-testing company that became one of Silicon Valley’s most infamous disasters. Her husband, Billy Evans, is now building a blood-testing company.
He would very much like everyone to stop calling it “Theranos 2.0.”
WIRED’s new investigation looks at Haemanthus, a startup Evans founded in 2022 that aims to create a countertop machine capable of testing blood, urine and saliva in the home. Evans says the comparisons to Theranos are misleading because the technology and company are fundamentally different.
On the science, he has a point. Haemanthus is developing a system based on Raman spectroscopy, which uses lasers to read molecular signatures in biological samples. Experts consulted by WIRED say the underlying science is legitimate and materially different from the technology Theranos claimed to have perfected.
UC Irvine chemistry professor Eric Potma, who consults for the company, told WIRED that Haemanthus has credible engineers and is pursuing real scientific ideas. He explicitly said his assessment is that Haemanthus is not Theranos.
The branding problem remains brutal. Evans is married to Holmes, the company is trying to move diagnostics into the home, and a new documentary shows the couple discussing product ideas while Holmes is incarcerated.
A person familiar with Haemanthus told The Wall Street Journal that Holmes is not formally involved in the business. Her name does not appear on the company’s incorporation documents.
But the documentary complicates that clean separation. Viewers see Evans and Holmes talking about prototypes and collaborating on ideas, including conversations that take place while she is in prison.
Evans has acknowledged that participating in the documentary may have been a spectacularly risky communications decision. That is one way to put it. Building a blood-testing startup while married to Elizabeth Holmes is already a public-relations obstacle course; filming yourself discussing it with Elizabeth Holmes adds hurdles.
Haemanthus has reportedly raised as much as $20 million and remains largely in stealth mode. It has no consumer product on the market and has released relatively little public information.
The company initially plans to pursue veterinary diagnostics, apparently as a less difficult regulatory path. WIRED notes that marketing materials have suggested limited regulatory oversight, though the USDA has said veterinary diagnostic products still fall under agency authority.
Evans’s longer-term ambitions are even bigger. Company materials reportedly envision shrinking the technology into a wearable device after additional research and substantial fundraising.
That ambition is exactly why the Theranos comparison refuses to die. Both stories involve a seductive promise: take complicated diagnostic testing out of specialized laboratories and make it small, fast and accessible to ordinary people.
The difference is that Haemanthus’s underlying technology is not imaginary, and experts say its engineering work appears legitimate. Whether it can actually deliver the consumer product Evans is describing is an entirely different question.
So “Theranos 2.0” may be scientifically unfair. As a headline, though, marrying Elizabeth Holmes and launching a home blood-testing startup was always going to make that nickname nearly impossible to kill.
