“Not every cloud brings rain.” This proverb holds a quiet wisdom that transcends time and place. It speaks of promise, potential, and the sometimes cruel emptiness beneath grand appearances. The saga of Theranos, the blood-testing startup that promised to revolutionize medicine, but instead collapsed under its own illusions — is a modern parable of this truth.

In this story, Theranos itself was the cloud: heavy with expectation, seemingly pregnant with transformation, but ultimately failing to deliver the rain of functioning technology. Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos’ founder, was the storm-chaser; desperate, relentless, and at times blind to reality, who tried to force that cloud to rain, no matter the cost.

The Making of A Cloud

Image Credit:Inverse.com

Theranos was born in 2003, pitched as a breakthrough that would democratize blood testing. Its promise was breathtaking: hundreds of tests from just a single drop of blood. This was not merely another shelf product, but a vision for a healthier, more accessible world.

Engineers and scientists struggled behind closed doors with equipment that didn’t work, tests that failed, and results that couldn’t be replicated. The core technology behind it—the proprietary Edison machine, was fundamentally flawed. It could not reliably produce accurate results across a wide range of tests.

Money Sometimes Moves Without Merit

Despite these technical shortcomings, the branches of Theranos’s story flourished in public view. The company raised over $700 million from high-profile investors between 2004 and 2015, reaching a valuation of nearly $9 billion at its peak.

These included major figures such as Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family (of Walmart fame), and venture capital firms like Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The board was a who’s who of political and military elites, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Defense Secretary James Mattis. Their presence lent credibility far beyond scientific circles.

Theranos also secured high-profile partnerships, most notably with Walgreens and Safeway. Walgreens launched Theranos testing centers in select stores, promoting the idea of fast, affordable blood tests accessible to the public. These partnerships brought Theranos out of the shadows and into the retail mainstream, further bolstering its image.

But this flourishing was an illusion, a dangerous fog obscuring the company’s fragile scientific roots. The company’s secretive culture forbade independent validation of its technology—a fatal flaw. When regulators and journalists tried to peek behind the curtain, they found only smoke.

The company’s refusal to allow independent validation was a fatal flaw.

Persistence Amid Impossibility

Image Above: Elizabeth Holmes. Credit: Sky News

Elizabeth Holmes was tireless in her insistence that the technology worked, despite growing evidence to the contrary. Her repeated claims that Theranos could change the world echoed the proverb, “If you climb up a tree to pick fruit, you must not stop halfway.” So of course, she refused to let go.

Yet, African wisdom cautions against blind persistence. The Akan people say, “The crab does not give birth to a bird.” In other words, some things are fundamentally impossible, regardless of effort or desire. No amount of chasing, no matter how dogged, could force the Theranos cloud to bring what it could not naturally produce.

When It Rains, It Pours

Ironically, the proverb “Rain does not fall on one roof alone” illustrates that Theranos’s failure wasn’t contained. Patients received inaccurate diagnoses. Some were told they had life-threatening diseases when they didn’t; others received false reassurances.

The Theranos cloud began to fade in the sky when a handful of insiders refused to remain silent. Scientists, former employees, and eventually journalists formed a quiet but powerful resistance to the myth that Holmes had built. Their efforts to reveal the truth were not without risk. Employees lived in fear of legal threats and retaliation. But as the saying goes, “When the music changes, so does the dance.”

The music changed in October 2015, when John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal published the first in a series of groundbreaking investigative reports. The articles exposed how Theranos was using traditional machines made by companies like Siemens to run most of its tests, not its own Edison device.

The reporting relied on sources like Tyler Shultz, the grandson of board member George Shultz, and Erika Cheung, both former employees who witnessed falsified data and misrepresented test accuracy. It turns out that the company had quietly relied on traditional commercial machines for most of its testing, often diluting samples or mixing data to mask failures.

This was the gotcha moment—the thunder that cracked the sky, triggering a cascade of consequences.

A Flood of Investigations

Image Credit: The New York Times

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) conducted an inspection of Theranos’ Newark, California, lab in late 2015, concluding that it posed “immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety.” By January 2016, Theranos was banned from operating its lab for two years. Walgreens terminated its partnership in mid-2016, leading to the closure of all Theranos wellness centers. In rapid succession, the house of cards fell.

“You cannot cure a headache by decapitation,” says a Malawian proverb. And yet, Holmes responded not with reform, but retaliation. She fired dissenting employees, threatened whistleblowers with lawsuits, and maintained a rigid wall of secrecy. Rather than acknowledge flaws and pivot, she attempted to preserve her myth by eliminating perceived threats—deepening the company’s legal and ethical crisis.

After the Storm

By March 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Holmes and SunnyBalwani with “massive fraud.” The SEC alleged that they had engaged in an elaborate, years-long scheme to exaggerate or make false statements about the accuracy of Theranos’s technology. Holmes settled with the SEC without admitting wrongdoing, agreeing to relinquish control of the company and pay a $500,000 fine.

Later that year, in June 2018, Holmes and Balwani were criminally indicted on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They were accused of deceiving both investors and patients while knowing the company’s technology did not work. This marked the formal collapse of the Theranos empire.

Holmes’s trial began in September 2021 and concluded in January 2022, when she was convicted on four counts of fraud and conspiracy. In November 2022, she was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in federal prison and reported to prison in May 2023.

Balwani, tried separately, was convicted on all 12 counts in July 2022 and sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison, beginning his sentence shortly after Holmes.

Their joint downfall echoes the proverb, “When the clouds gather, it is not one tree that breaks.” Both Holmes and Balwani had built Theranos on the same illusion. Both insisted on forcing the cloud to rain. And both fell under the weight of its collapse.

The Investors' Reckoning

The cloud’s evaporation left many scorched. Investors lost an estimated $600–700 million in total. High-profile names—Rupert Murdoch (who reportedly invested $125 million), the Walton family, Betsy DeVos, and Carlos Slim—were among the worst hit. These were not minor backers but political and business titans, many of whom never conducted technical due diligence.

This reflects yet another African proverb: “He who is carried on another’s back does not appreciate how far the town is.” Many investors relied on the endorsements of other powerful figures, trusting Holmes’s charm and the prestige of her board, rather than seeking independent proof. Their trust in the “cloud” was based on appearances—not on evidence.

What Remains

The lessons of Theranos reach far beyond Elizabeth Holmes herself. As an Igbo proverb warns, “Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero.” For years, Holmes played both hunter and rainmaker—crafting a narrative of genius and brilliance. Now, the lions—albeit scientists, whistleblowers, and journalists—are finding their voice, revealing what truly happened in that cloud-shrouded jungle, decades ago.