Health technology company Theranos based in California that was once known as a high flying blood-testing start-up accused of cheating and betraying its investors is reportedly shutting down.
It is being stated that the company was not able to sell itself and is now looking to pay unsecured creditors its remaining cash of about $5 million in the coming months. A major portion of the employees already had their last day.
Theranos tries to sell itself, but, unfortunately, nobody was willing to acquire a company that has been disgraced and lost its investors nearly $1 billion. This move has come three months after the company’s founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, along with former chief operating officer Ramesh Balwani were charged with criminal fraud.
They were accused of misleading their investor, policymakers and the public about the accuracy of Theranos’s blood-testing technologies. If the charges against them are proved to be true, they could face prison sentences that would keep them behind bars for the rest of their lives along with total fines of $2.75m each.
Theranos was once the high soaring company and was a unicorn worth $9 billion. It promised its customers a painless, accurate, “groundbreaking” method of testing blood. Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 by when she was only 19. She became a media darling and attracted millions of dollars in investment on the basis of claims of innovative technology.
At a point in time, Theranos was worth more than $10 billion and Holmes became the youngest self-made female billionaire. However, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal two years ago changed the whole scenario and found that the company’s technology was flawed and Theranos was using routine blood-testing equipment for the vast majority of its tests.
Still, the company continued to operate but now, the fraud company is finally shutting down after taking a lot of accusations and blames.