Love at times walks into your life in the most unusual circumstances. Elizabeth Holmes, serving an 11-year sentence for one of the most notorious corporate scandals in American history, met Billy Evans in 2017, just when she was surrounded by darkness with her startup Theranos, a health technology company, collapsing. An instant connection that made them fall in love soon blossomed into a partnership that defied all the odds.
The couple is once again in news as Evans, hailing from the family of successful hoteliers, has launched a start-up that sounds surprisingly similar to his fraudster girlfriend, the one that landed her behind the bars. According to New York Times, Billy Evans’s new company is a blood-testing firm that markets itself as “the future of diagnostics,” offering “a radically new approach to health testing." This is strangely similar to the marketing campaign of Holmes's company Theranos. Sources informed NPR that Holmes is also involved in the start-up and is advising her partner from the prison.
Named Haemanthus , Evans's new company plans to test pets for disease before moving to humans, as per the two investors who have pitched on the company speaking on the condition of anonymity to the Times. They plan to raise more than $50 million and their goal is “human health optimization.” The upcoming startup is said to have invented a device that can test blood, saliva, or urine for disease biomarkers in a matter of seconds. However, its similarity to Holmes's technology is uncanny and raises questions.
Holmes's company had claimed to develop a revolutionary technology that could perform numerous blood tests from a single finger prick, however, the technology never actually existed.
Theranos falsely claimed its technology could diagnose hundreds of conditions, but it often relied on third-party devices for basic tests, leading to inaccurate results. The scandal, widely reported in media and followed by criminal proceedings, culminated in the company's collapse. Elizabeth Holmes, who denied wrongdoing, was convicted of fraud in 2022 and is now serving an 11-year prison sentence in Texas.
James W. Breyer, a prominent investor who declined to fund the new start-up, said his concerns were rooted in a lack of “scientific defensibility and clinical utility”—the same factors that doomed Theranos.
Still, Evans appears undeterred. The 33-year-old MIT economics graduate, who once managed special projects at Luminar Technologies, has already raised millions and built a team largely drawn from his old tech circles.
How they met
Holmes and Evans met at a charity event in 2017 through a mutual friend, and the sparks immediately flew. By that time Holmes's company was already on the downfall, and a lot was being written about her. It was natural for Evans to be cautious but perhaps he couldn't ignore the undeniable chemistry. "To say we immediately fell in love isn't an overstatement," Evans told The New York Times.
"It had been two years of all this stuff written about me, and I think you get to know someone in a totally different way when you walk in with that skepticism versus if you meet when everything is sunshine and roses," she told The Times. "That allowed us to get to know each other in a really deep way."
"I was totally in love with him. I loved him. We talked for hours. It was the most pointed moment in my life. It’s when I trusted my heart."
Evans confessed to feeling strangely comfortable with a stranger and losing track of time when he was with her. "The rest of the world ceased to exist," Evans wrote in a letter to the sentencing judge and obtained by PEOPLE. "It was strange to feel so comfortable and willing to share with someone who I didn't know. I was captivated by her childish wonder and authenticity. She listened more intently than anyone I had ever met. We spoke for hours, I lost track of time and even if I didn't know it…. I fell in love."
The initial skepticism didn’t last long. The couple talked for three hours that night and quickly moved in together. By August 2018, they were engaged.
They started out as friends and soon started seeing each other as soulmates. For the next six months. they remained friends, cooking meals and hiking trails in the Santa Cruz mountains. "Billy was also talking about his life and making a difference with humanity when we hiked together. I knew this is the person I wanted to spend my life with," Holmes told the outlet. "I admire him. I’m so proud. He fights for our family, our babies and me — it’s unconditional love."
Amid chaos, they built a familyTheir relationship developed privately, with little presence on social media, and they eventually started a family.
It all happened at a time when Holmes was under intense public scrutiny. Her company Theranos, once valued at $9 billion, had been exposed as a sham. Its revolutionary blood-testing device, the Edison, couldn’t deliver on its promises, and Holmes was indicted for defrauding investors and patients.
However on the personal front things were different as Holmes and Evans were building their family. They welcomed their first child, William, in 2021. Their daughter, Invicta (Latin for “invincible”), was born in early 2023, shortly before Holmes reported to prison.
While many speculated that Holmes's pregnancies were a calculated legal strategy to delay or avoid her sentence, she claims it was her desire to be a mother that led her to plan back-to-back pregnancies.
“I always wanted to be a mother,” she said in a 2025 PEOPLE interview. “I truly did not think I would ever be convicted… It wasn’t planned, and I can’t worry about what others think.”
Born into a family of successful hoteliers, Evans attended MIT, where he earned a degree in Economics.
Are the two married?
The couple are not married but they plan to. “Maybe we’ll get married someday. But our bond is more than a piece of paper,” Holmes said in an interview. “We bought rings on Amazon before I went to prison," she added.
The couple is once again in news as Evans, hailing from the family of successful hoteliers, has launched a start-up that sounds surprisingly similar to his fraudster girlfriend, the one that landed her behind the bars. According to New York Times, Billy Evans’s new company is a blood-testing firm that markets itself as “the future of diagnostics,” offering “a radically new approach to health testing." This is strangely similar to the marketing campaign of Holmes's company Theranos. Sources informed NPR that Holmes is also involved in the start-up and is advising her partner from the prison.
Named Haemanthus , Evans's new company plans to test pets for disease before moving to humans, as per the two investors who have pitched on the company speaking on the condition of anonymity to the Times. They plan to raise more than $50 million and their goal is “human health optimization.” The upcoming startup is said to have invented a device that can test blood, saliva, or urine for disease biomarkers in a matter of seconds. However, its similarity to Holmes's technology is uncanny and raises questions.
Holmes's company had claimed to develop a revolutionary technology that could perform numerous blood tests from a single finger prick, however, the technology never actually existed.
Theranos falsely claimed its technology could diagnose hundreds of conditions, but it often relied on third-party devices for basic tests, leading to inaccurate results. The scandal, widely reported in media and followed by criminal proceedings, culminated in the company's collapse. Elizabeth Holmes, who denied wrongdoing, was convicted of fraud in 2022 and is now serving an 11-year prison sentence in Texas.
James W. Breyer, a prominent investor who declined to fund the new start-up, said his concerns were rooted in a lack of “scientific defensibility and clinical utility”—the same factors that doomed Theranos.
Still, Evans appears undeterred. The 33-year-old MIT economics graduate, who once managed special projects at Luminar Technologies, has already raised millions and built a team largely drawn from his old tech circles.
How they met
Holmes and Evans met at a charity event in 2017 through a mutual friend, and the sparks immediately flew. By that time Holmes's company was already on the downfall, and a lot was being written about her. It was natural for Evans to be cautious but perhaps he couldn't ignore the undeniable chemistry. "To say we immediately fell in love isn't an overstatement," Evans told The New York Times.
"It had been two years of all this stuff written about me, and I think you get to know someone in a totally different way when you walk in with that skepticism versus if you meet when everything is sunshine and roses," she told The Times. "That allowed us to get to know each other in a really deep way."
"I was totally in love with him. I loved him. We talked for hours. It was the most pointed moment in my life. It’s when I trusted my heart."
Evans confessed to feeling strangely comfortable with a stranger and losing track of time when he was with her. "The rest of the world ceased to exist," Evans wrote in a letter to the sentencing judge and obtained by PEOPLE. "It was strange to feel so comfortable and willing to share with someone who I didn't know. I was captivated by her childish wonder and authenticity. She listened more intently than anyone I had ever met. We spoke for hours, I lost track of time and even if I didn't know it…. I fell in love."
The initial skepticism didn’t last long. The couple talked for three hours that night and quickly moved in together. By August 2018, they were engaged.
They started out as friends and soon started seeing each other as soulmates. For the next six months. they remained friends, cooking meals and hiking trails in the Santa Cruz mountains. "Billy was also talking about his life and making a difference with humanity when we hiked together. I knew this is the person I wanted to spend my life with," Holmes told the outlet. "I admire him. I’m so proud. He fights for our family, our babies and me — it’s unconditional love."
Amid chaos, they built a familyTheir relationship developed privately, with little presence on social media, and they eventually started a family.
It all happened at a time when Holmes was under intense public scrutiny. Her company Theranos, once valued at $9 billion, had been exposed as a sham. Its revolutionary blood-testing device, the Edison, couldn’t deliver on its promises, and Holmes was indicted for defrauding investors and patients.
However on the personal front things were different as Holmes and Evans were building their family. They welcomed their first child, William, in 2021. Their daughter, Invicta (Latin for “invincible”), was born in early 2023, shortly before Holmes reported to prison.
While many speculated that Holmes's pregnancies were a calculated legal strategy to delay or avoid her sentence, she claims it was her desire to be a mother that led her to plan back-to-back pregnancies.
“I always wanted to be a mother,” she said in a 2025 PEOPLE interview. “I truly did not think I would ever be convicted… It wasn’t planned, and I can’t worry about what others think.”
Born into a family of successful hoteliers, Evans attended MIT, where he earned a degree in Economics.
Are the two married?
The couple are not married but they plan to. “Maybe we’ll get married someday. But our bond is more than a piece of paper,” Holmes said in an interview. “We bought rings on Amazon before I went to prison," she added.
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