The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley

Elizabeth Holmes arrived in Silicon Valley with a revolutionary medical invention. She called it “the Edison”: a small, hyper-sophisticated black box that performed 200 tests in minutes, all from a single drop of blood. Needles, laboratories, and the select few companies that controlled them would become instantly obsolete. Like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Thomas Edison himself, Holmes intended to tear down and revolutionize an entire industry. The hitch? All of it was a lie. The system was a hoax. And what began as one of 2014’s hottest tech companies—valued at nine billion dollars—dissolved into a fraudulent, bankrupt scheme that exposed Silicon Valley’s underbelly.