Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. In the meantime, her partner is starting one of his own.
Billy Evans, who has two children with Ms. Holmes, is trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics” and “a radically new approach to health testing,” according to marketing materials reviewed by The New York Times.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Theranos similarly aimed to revolutionize diagnostic testing. The Silicon Valley start-up captured the world’s attention by claiming, falsely as it turned out, to have developed a blood-testing device that could run a slew of complex lab tests from a mere finger prick.
Mr. Evans’s company is named Haemanthus, which is a flower also known as the blood lily. It plans to begin with testing pets for diseases before progressing to humans, according to two investors pitched on the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had agreed to keep the plans secret. Mr. Evans’s marketing materials, which lay out hopes to eventually raise more than $50 million, say the ultimate goal is nothing short of “human health optimization.”
A photo provided to potential investors of the start-up’s prototype bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Theranos’s infamous blood-testing machine, variously known as the Edison or miniLab. The device that Mr. Evans’s company is developing is a rectangular contraption with a door, a digital display screen and what the investor materials describe as tunable lasers inside.
Haemanthus says its device will test blood as well as saliva and urine.
The marketing documents provided with the photo say there is “no regulatory oversight — U.S.D.A. confirmed in writing.”
It’s not clear what the company means by that. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Seth W. Christensen, said he was not able to confirm whether the agency had corresponded with Haemanthus. “U.S.D.A. does regulate vet diagnostics,” including blood testing, Mr. Christensen said.
Mr. Evans responded in an interview, “When you’re in stealth, you’re trying to be in stealth. They aren’t going to find anything associated with the name Haemanthus.” Mr. Evans sent a partially redacted document from the U.S.D.A. that said, “It does not appear that the proposed product is within the regulatory jurisdiction” of the Center for Veterinary Biologics, which is a part of the U.S.D.A.
Mr. Evans, the 33-year-old heir to a California hotel fortune who met Ms. Holmes while federal authorities were investigating her, has not publicly discussed the new venture. The documents indicate he has already assembled roughly 10 employees. He describes his employment on social media simply as working for a “stealth start-up.”
James W. Breyer, the well-known venture capitalist and early investor in Facebook, said his team had been asked to put in money and decided against it “for many of the same reasons we passed twice on Theranos.”
“In diagnostics, we’ve long held that the difference between a compelling story and a great company lies in scientific defensibility and clinical utility,” he wrote in an email.
If sequels are de rigueur in the so-called disruptive world of technology, this one is particularly bold. Theranos became one of the most celebrated start-ups in the globe last decade and attracted both big-time investors (Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison) and a board of advisers that included Henry Kissinger.
Ms. Holmes, often clad in a black turtleneck that invited comparisons to the Apple founder Steve Jobs, was feted on magazine covers, and at the White House.
Few knew that Theranos’s technology could not diagnose hundreds of conditions it claimed it could. As was chronicled in The Wall Street Journal, a best-selling book, a podcast, television series and later criminal proceedings, Theranos was largely using third-party technology to run rudimentary assays — when it did any testing at all. Patients received false diagnoses. The company crumbled ahead of Ms. Holmes’s indictment for fraud.
Ms. Holmes, who has always maintained that she is innocent, was convicted of fraud in 2022 and sentenced to 11 years in prison. She is incarcerated in a Bryan, Texas, federal prison.
Mr. Evans’s idea for Haemanthus traces back at least a year and a half, when he incorporated the company in Delaware, according to public corporate filings. Documents filed in Delaware and Texas show that its offices have been at various addresses in the trendy South Lamar neighborhood of Austin, Texas, where Mr. Evans lives with his and Ms. Holmes’s two children.
Haemanthus began by soliciting $3.5 million in funding from friends and family and this spring began reaching out to other well-to-do backers in Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area for an additional $15 million, according to the investor materials.
The billionaire Michael Dell’s investment firm turned down the effort, according to two people briefed on the outreach.
The one investor who could be identified in public records is Matthew E. Parkhurst, the part owner of a Mediterranean tapas bar in downtown Austin and other investments. Mr. Parkhurst did not respond to requests for comment.
Much of the Haemanthus executive team hails from Luminar, a struggling self-driving car company where Mr. Evans worked for two years, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Pet health care is the first market Mr. Evans’s company aims to address. The start-up has thus far received one patent.
According to the company’s marketing materials and patent, the Haemanthus device will use a laser to scan blood, saliva or urine from pets and analyze the samples on a molecular level. In a matter of seconds, the marketing material said Mr. Evans’s machine would be able to identify and qualify biomarkers such as glucose and hormones, and deploy what the company calls deep learning models to detect cancer and infections.
Animal medicine has grown into a colossal industry as private-equity firms have increasingly acquired and consolidated independent veterinary practices.
Pet cancer screenings alone are a multibillion-dollar market. Edgemont Partners, a health care investment bank, describes it as a “recession-proof industry.”
Haemanthus told investors that it had roughly two dozen advisers, including veterinarians and diagnosticians, though it did not name them.
Haemanthus’s materials say the long-term goal is to develop a stamp-size, wearable version of the product for humans. “Based on our experience and partner input,” it says, that will require three years and $70 million.
The investor presentation makes no mention of Mr. Evans’s connection to Ms. Holmes.
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
