I mean, she had this star-studded group of people who were backing this idea, including former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who was on the Theranos board of directors.
And for a while, lots of people believed her. That obviously would be pretty revolutionary if true. Well, Holmes said her company had developed a way to test for hundreds of diseases with just a tiny little pinprick of blood from the tip of your finger, you know, that, you know, these devices will one day predict what conditions you have before even your doctor knew. Let's talk about that unraveling, because - can you just, like, remind people what exactly went wrong? Like, what are prosecutors alleging was the crime here?ĪLLYN: Yeah. But, you know, she focused on assessments that painted the company in the best possible light.Īnd look, Ailsa the story of Theranos is actually pretty remarkable - from an idea that she dreamt up in a Stanford dorm room to a $9 billion company - that is, until these bold promises began to unravel.ĬHANG: Right.
And then she went over in granular detail what her blood testing devices were trying to accomplish, the, you know, kinds of talks she had with pharmaceutical companies and outside researchers. She smiled at the jury, and, you know, she sounded exactly like she has sounded in past interviews - really calm, really focused. When the court finally started, she got up to the witness box.
Elizabeth holmes today show youtube trial#
This is one of the most anticipated Silicon Valley trials in years, so people actually started lining up around 3:00 in the morning.ĪLLYN: Remember this trial has been going on for 11 weeks, and Holmes taking the stand is the main event, so people wanted to see what she was going to say. NPR's Bobby Allyn was in the federal courthouse for Holmes's testimony and joins us now from San Jose.ĬHANG: All right, so tell us what happened in court today.ĪLLYN: Yeah. Well, the machines did not live up to her promises, and the company imploded. As the CEO of Theranos, Holmes claimed that her groundbreaking technology would revolutionize how blood tests detect disease. Today in Silicon Valley, Elizabeth Holmes took the witness stand to defend herself against fraud charges.