You Can’t See Something About Billy Evans’s Haemanthus

Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans outdoors a courtroom in 2022.
Picture: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Pictures

There’s a whole lot of publicity for Elizabeth Holmes’s associate within the hit documentary by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, You Can See All the things. Over almost three hours, you see Billy Evans as a domineering associate and stealth social-media surrogate — and get a glimpse of him absolutely bare brushing his enamel within the bathe. However what the viewers doesn’t get, past a couple of glimpses of Holmes and Evans pitching traders on a post-Theranos prototype, is a take a look at what Evans is engaged on whereas Holmes is in jail for operating Silicon Valley’s most notorious fraud.

In 2022, 5 years after he first met Holmes, Evans based an organization referred to as Haemanthus, which is known as after a genus of blood lily. Like Theranos, it’s a blood-testing start-up with a prototype machine that appears an entire lot like the Edison — the field that falsely promised to run greater than 1,000 immediate exams with only a pinprick of blood. Little is understood concerning the non-public firm, not like Theranos, which attracted countless publicity and well-known traders. However Evans’s determination to launch a blood-testing firm after assembly Holmes is elevating a whole lot of questions on whether or not this can be a Theranos reboot — and whether or not his associate is onboard. Under is every part we learn about Haemanthus, which, inevitably, contains some You Can See All the things spoilers.

Haemanthus is creating a check for urine, saliva, and small blood samples promising “a radically new strategy to well being testing” that may very well be “the way forward for diagnostics,” in response to advertising and marketing supplies obtained by the New York Occasions final yr. In pursuit of this radical future, they’ve give you a superb trick to keep away from Meals and Drug Administration oversight: They’re testing on animals first below the much less strict regulatory framework of the Division of Agriculture. Ultimately, the plan, per the advertising and marketing supplies, is whole “human well being optimization.”

To research nonhuman blood and saliva, Haemanthus makes use of Raman spectroscopy, a sort of laser first developed within the Sixties that may decide early-stage markers of ALS and differentiate between malignant and cancerous tissue. The corporate additionally states it makes use of AI to research the information. Like with Theranos, its purpose is getting the product right into a small, PC-sized field for business use — and finally, make it even smaller. In an investor presentation obtained by the Occasions, the ultimate product could be a small piece of wearable tech, which the corporate anticipates would take three years and $70 million to make. The ambition is Theranos-like, however that value is way decrease: Holmes raised almost $1 billion earlier than she was uncovered.

In principle, that is all attainable. “Handheld Raman devices the dimensions of a cellphone are already commercially obtainable,” stated Igor Lednev, a chemistry professor at SUNY–Albany engaged on Raman detection for Alzheimer’s. “We’re virtually working in the identical discipline, making an attempt to develop comparable expertise.” Eric Potma, a Haemanthus advisor and chemistry professor at UC Irvine, informed Wired that “from an engineering perspective, they’ve some fascinating concepts which can be price exploring.”

Haemanthus has been fundraising, starting with $3.15 million from family and friends within the spring of 2025, in response to the investor supplies seen by the Occasions, along with one other $15 million from San Francisco and Austin traders. However as a result of the corporate is non-public, there’s little details about who’s onboard. NPR studies that the corporate has round a dozen staffers, together with some individuals who labored with Evans at a earlier job creating laser sensors for self-driving automobiles.

Evans has stated on his social media that he’s engaged on a “stealth” well being start-up. “Once you’re in stealth, you’re making an attempt to be in stealth,” he informed the Occasions. “They aren’t going to search out something related to the identify Haemanthus.”

The corporate has additionally utilized for a patent to make use of AI sensors to run and analyze its exams. The researchers concerned within the patent didn’t reply to requests for remark. The one investor who has publicly come ahead is Avenue International Enterprise Capital, a small San Francisco–based mostly agency funding tech start-ups. That agency additionally didn’t reply to requests for remark.

In a Could 2025 publish on X, when the Occasions broke the information of his fundraising efforts, the corporate acknowledged:

“We’re Haemanthus. Sure, our CEO, Billy Evans, is Elizabeth Holmes’ associate. Skepticism is rational. We should clear a better bar. When @nytimes contacted us, we invited them: see our lab, tech, and group. They declined. The headline was already written. Our actuality inconvenient.”

In a seven-post thread, the account stated that the corporate prefers to “construct first, discuss later” and that its analysis will “stand by itself deserves.” It added that Haemanthus is “making lab expertise accessible by way of trendy lasers and AI.”

As for the animal-research angle, the thread stated Haemanthus is beginning with veterinary testing “not as a result of it’s simpler, however as a result of it’s sensible and significant.” The thread additionally acknowledged that it “helps animals who can’t describe signs.”

Evans comes from a rich California household: His grandparents based a small chain of luxurious motels that employs over 1,000 individuals. In a assertion earlier than the film’s launch, the corporate asserted that Evans shouldn’t be a shareholder or worker.

Evans, 34, attended a personal highschool in San Diego — tuition as we speak is $49,100 — earlier than graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise in 2015 with a bachelor’s in economics. After faculty, Evans reportedly tried to create a concierge-medical-service start-up connecting rich purchasers in China with medical care in america, setting them up with a chauffeur and luxurious lodge stays. “Then he realized that it’s truly very laborious to get in with the prosperous Chinese language group in the event you’re not fluent in Chinese language, so he dropped that,” a supply near Evans informed the New York Submit in 2019. He labored for LinkedIn for two years earlier than going to work for Luminar, an automatic driving firm.

Via a consultant, Evans declined to remark.

Within the Haemanthus thread on X, the corporate stated, “Elizabeth Holmes has zero involvement” and “this isn’t Theranos 2.0.” Final yr, NPR reported that Holmes is listed as a scientific adviser, which the corporate denied on X.

Within the doc, earlier than she studies to jail, Evans and Holmes are discussing a undertaking that includes lasers and AI that Evans describes as “2.0” and a possibility to “put the band again collectively and do all of it once more.” Holmes responds, “From wherever I’m, I’m going to proceed to work inventing, even when it’s inventing from a cage.” However in response to a supply near Evans, the couple was not referring to Haemanthus on this specific dialog however relatively an try and create a “chemistry-less” system to make testing reasonably priced. When the undertaking resulted in a testing panel that also value a number of hundred {dollars}, it was shelved.

Whereas the corporate has been clear in its statements that Holmes shouldn’t be concerned, the doc raises some questions as to how Evans is utilizing her likeness. He claims that he has energy of legal professional over her and that he’ll publish on her social-media accounts with out her approval. “It’s lots simpler to make it appear to be Elizabeth Holmes is El Chapo operating a diagnostics cartel from jail than it’s to say, ‘Billy’s constructing a nerdy firm,’” he stated on the All-In podcast in October.