The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley
With a new invention that promised to revolutionize blood testing, Elizabeth Holmes became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, heralded as the next Steve Jobs. Then, just two years later, her multibillion-dollar company, Theranos, was dissolved. Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney tries to uncover the truth hiding behind the enigmatic founder’s unblinking eyes, whose ambition to revolutionize blood testing through biotechnology spawned one of the biggest frauds in Silicon Valley. According to Holmes, the Theranos Edison machine was a miraculous diagnostic tool that would offer patients a cheap way to test their blood for 200 diseases at their local drug store with just a finger-prick. The only problem was, the company’s science could never back up her claims. Armed with charm alone, she chose to overlook this fact and went ahead to secure millions in funding from big-shot investors, like Betsy DuVos and Rupert Murdoch, some of whom refused to believe they were duped until the very end. Chaos and paranoia ensues in one of the most incredible scandals in tech that once again proves that reality is stranger than fiction.