11 top tycoons were cut leek! Silicon Valley is dumbfounded that the "female Steve Jobs" is a "female Jia Yueting".
From the world-changing tech genius to the disillusioned investor who lost all his money, there is sometimes only a hair's breadth between. It's something that perhaps LeEco shareholders know best.
The protagonist of today's story is Elizabeth Holmes, a post-1980s beauty with an aura of Stanford University seniority.
It was once reported that her biotech company, Theranos, was once so popular that it was valued at $9 billion. Many thought that the "nanodrops" she touted would change the future of health care.
Screenshot of Elizabeth Holmes talking at the Fortune Forum
But last Christmas's funding round couldn't save the giant bubble. According to court documents, investors in this company lost more than $700 million (about $4.6 billion) in total.
Shockingly, the list of "leeks" who suffered losses includes a number of world-class celebrities, including media giant Rupert Murdoch, the founding family of Walmart, the former world's richest man, Carlos Slim, and U.S. Secretary of Education DeVos, all of whom "suffocated" over Holmes' dream. ".
Many billionaires have been "cut down"
The family of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos invested $100 million in Theranos, and while DeVos had previously revealed in a government document that her family was an investor in Theranos investor, the size of that investment was not known at the time.
▲DeVos, now the U.S. secretary of education
Greg McNeely, the COO of Windquest Group, the family holding company for DeVos and her husband, said, "The investing members of the DeVos family are very disappointed in Theranos." It should also be noted that DeVos is married to Dick DeVos, son of Amway co-founder Richard DeVos.
The Walton family, one of the world's richest, is also a victim, descended from Wal-Mart founders Sam Wal-Mart and Bud Wal-Mart. The Waltons were the most damaged investors - the family invested $150 million in Theranos through two companies.
Three members of the Walton family, Jim Walton, Robertson Walton and Alice Walton, ranked 14th, 15th and 16th, respectively, with $46.4 billion, $46.2 billion and $46 billion, according to the latest Forbes list of billionaires.
▲Photo credit: Forbes
Rupert Murdoch, the world's premier news mogul, is the largest individual investor in Theranos. Murdoch had invested $125 million in the company in March 2015 and then sold his shares back to the company in early 2017 for $1, people familiar with the matter said. Murdoch received an additional $4 million from Theranos after Theranos reached a legal settlement with a hedge fund investor under the share repurchase agreement, people familiar with the matter said.
And the San Francisco-based hedge fund, called Partner Fund Management, invested $96 million in Theranos back in early 2014. When the hedge fund sued Theranos for fraud in October 2016, Theranos eventually agreed to settle for $43 million, but neither admitted nor denied the fraud allegations against the company at the time, according to people familiar with the matter.
Another person caught in the crossfire was Carlos Slim, the former world's richest man and Mexican telecom mogul. However, he only lost $30 million.Between 2013 and 2015, Carlos Slim was repeatedly named the world's richest man by Fortune magazine. As of March 2018, he is ranked seventh on the list of the world's richest people with $70.5 billion, and his industries cover 13 sectors, including education, healthcare, industrial manufacturing, transportation, real estate, media, and energy.
▲Carlos Slim
In addition, Robert Craft, owner of the NFL's New England Patriots, was also a victim. However, he only lost $1 million.
▲Famous investors who lost money investing in Theranos
The Wall Street Journal reports that it's historically rare for so many top investors to lose such a huge amount on the same investment. As you can also see in the chart above, these 11 prominent investors have lost a cumulative $723.2 million (about $4.6 billion) as a result of their failed investment in Theranos.
The fall of Silicon Valley's star companies
So what kind of company is Theranos? It's a company that has made so many "old drivers" in the investment world lose their footing.
In fact, three years ago Theranos was a real star company in Silicon Valley.
In October 2015, 101 Silicon Valley CEOs, investors and think tank members voted on "which startup will change the world". As a result, startup Theranos came in second behind Tesla.
Inextricably linked to the fate of Theranos is the legendary "female Steve Jobs," Elizabeth Holmes, who not only has a classic last name, but also a life story that has made her a favorite of the world's most famous entrepreneurs. She not only has a classic last name, but her legendary life story is even more admirable.
In 2003, at the age of 19, Holmes voluntarily dropped out of Stanford during her sophomore year, taking the money her parents had saved up for college tuition and putting it into entrepreneurship.
"Ten years in the making," the company flourished in 2014, with a valuation of $9 billion. At that time, Theranos had an "all-star board of directors", serving as technical advisers and directors, in addition to the founder of Holmes, but also the Chinese people are familiar with the former U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger, and the former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Senator, Admiral and other big names.
The spectacle of a large group of former high-ranking government officials in their 80s and 90s stepping up to the plate for the startup of a beautiful woman in her early 30s has rocked the U.S. biology community. Holmes herself was featured on Forbes magazine's year-end cover in 2014.
▲Forbes Magazine Cover
Theranos' main business is blood testing. Holmes has claimed that she invented a groundbreaking innovation that allows for comprehensive tests that can only be done in specialized labs to be done by collecting one or two drops of blood at your fingertips.
▲Theranos has developed a method for taking blood. At right is a tiny blood storage container called a "nanotainer," which is only about 1.29 centimeters long
But in a civil fraud complaint against Holmes in March, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) outright characterized the allegation as a lie, saying that Theranos used commercial equipment made by other companies to conduct the tests. commercial devices made by other companies to perform the vast majority of blood tests.
▲Holmes
At the time, Holmes neither admitted nor denied the allegations, but she returned most of her Theranos stock, relinquished control of the company, paid a $500,000 fine, and agreed to a sentence that banned her from holding an executive position at any public company for up to 10 years.
In an email from Theranos to the company's shareholders on April 10 of this year, Holmes made it clear that the company could be liquidated by August of this year. Earlier that day, Holmes also told most of the company's employees that they would leave Theranos after June 12 and that the company would no longer pay them, according to people familiar with the matter. At that time, Theranos was also down to just 125 employees.
Source: phoenixinfo