Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of the closed health firm Theranos, is currently on trial for nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud by the SEC because Theranos gave customers of their blood tests falsified results. She was indicted with former Theranos COO and former boyfriend Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who had left the company in 2016. Elizabeth is on trial right now (fall 2021,) and Sunny faces trial in 2022.
Theranos was founded in 2003 with the name Real-Time Cures, but Sunny did not come on board until 2009. Athough Sunny and Elizabeth were dating and living together at the time, they tried to hide this information from everyone.
When Sunny came on board his girlfriend’s company, Theranos was almost out of cash. He loaned the company $13 million, and as part of the deal he got a job “executive vice chairman.” His true role in the company was vague and vast. He started to micromanage every department and his management style was aggressive according to former employees.
How did Sunny Balwani make his money?
Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani is from Pakistan and came to the U.S. in 1986 to go to college. After graduating, he worked as a software engineer for 10 years at Lotus and Microsoft. In 1999, he made $40 million working at the startup CommerceBid.com, which bubbled and then went out of business five months after he cashed in on his stock after industry leader Commerce One bought them out. Instead of seeing this situation as a lucky situation of being in the right place at the right time, Sunny saw his $40 million windfall as proof that he was a superior business man.
How much older than Elizabeth is Sunny?
Sunny Balwani is 19 years older than Elizabeth Holmes.
How did Sunny and Elizabeth meet?
Sunny met Elizabeth in Beijing in 2002, the summer before she briefly attended college. It was her third year attending Stanford’s Mandarin program. Sunny was older than all the other students. He was already luxuriously rich from his CommerceBid lucky break and was taking classes at Stanford to help expand his knowledge.
Elizabeth was a bit of a loner, and found herself talking to Sunny more than the kids her age in the study abroad group. She was fascinated by his clout as a successful businessman. According to Johny Carreyou’s Bad Blood Elizabeth’s mother Noel claimed that Sunny had “rescued” her from some other students who were bullying her. Elizabeth was 18-years-old and Sunny was 37.
When did Sunny and Elizabeth start dating?
Although they met in 2002, they did not date right away. At that time Sunny was married to artist Keiko Fujimoto, but they divorced that year. It’s unknown exactly when Sunny and Elizabeth became a couple, but it seems to have been soon after Elizabeth had dropped out of Stanford in March, 2004. She has said in interviews that she had not planned to drop out of Stanford, but had found it necessary to because she was spending all her time securing funding for her company instead of attending classes.
Elizabeth moved into Sunny’s Palo Alto condo in July 2005. When he joined the company in 2009 they were still living together, but tried to conceal it. Elizabeth reportedly told her friend Chelsea Burkett, who she had recruited to work at Theranos, that she and Sunny had broken up. This was a lie. Sunny and Elizabeth continued to be in a relationship while they ran the company together. They broke up in late 2015, and Sunny left the company in 2016. Theranos dissolved in 2018.
37-year-old Elizabeth is now engaged to 27-year-old hospitality heir William “Billy” Evans. She gave birth to their baby, William Holmes Evans, on July 10, 2021.
Source Bad Blood by John Carreyou (affiliate link)
Read Next: This is what Elizabeth Holmes’ real voice sounds like
THERANOS The suicide of scientist Ian Gibbons right before deposition
Inside Apple ‘iPhone designer’ Ana Arriola’s short stint at Theranos
