Since the premiere of The Dropout on Hulu, fans have shown an interest in learning more about Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani’s real-life relationship as well as where the former Theranos lovers stand today.
After leaving Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani began a covert romance that lasted for years, according to the Hulu series The Dropout, which aired on March 3, 2022 and stars Amanda Seyfried and Naveen Andrews as Holmes and Balwani, respectively.
Holmes and Balwani went to considerable measures to keep their affair a secret from investors, colleagues, and, of course, the press. They were even known to lie about the nature of their relationship in order to avoid raising concerns about a potential conflict of interest with their employers.
Even if this wasn’t the most blatant deception in the ill-fated narrative of Theranos, Holmes and Balwani’s friendship is clearly important in Hulu’s The Dropout, which premiered on April 12. However, the narrative of their romance does not finish with the conclusion of the show.
The relationship between Holmes and Balwani continues to make news in the present day. Several trials and litigation are currently underway as a result of Theranos’ demise in 2018. The romance between the two former corporate leaders has emerged as a significant topic of conversation. Even though they had broken up years before, Holmes presented a number of shocking charges against Balwani during her own fraud trial in 2021.
(more on those claims below). The peculiar interaction between the former couple, which appeared to violate personal and professional boundaries on a daily basis, is still being considered by the courts, despite Balwani’s attorney’s robust denial of the allegations.
Continue reading if you want to learn all there is to know about Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani’s relationship, from how it began to where they are now.
Elizabeth Holmes & Sunny Balwani Met:
Holmes and Balwani met for the first time in 2002, and they have been together ever since. It all started when the two of them were in Beijing, China, where they were learning a new language with Stanford. A high school senior at the time was 18.
Holmes was a married 37-year-old student at the University of California, Berkeley, while Balwani was a married 37-year-old university student who was completing his MBA there. There was a 19-year age difference between the two.
Holmes said during her trial in 2021: “I knew that he had been a very successful businessman, and that he worked with Bill Gates in the early days of Microsoft.” “I talked to him about wanting to start a business, and a business I tried to start in high school, and I asked him for advice.”
Dating:
It was after their first meeting that Holmes and Balwani stayed in touch and talked. ABC News and Hulu both used Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup as a source for their shows “The Dropout” and “The Dropout: Part 1.”
Balwani often sent emails to the entrepreneurial hopeful during her first year at Stanford. In 2004, Holmes dropped out of college so she could start a company that would become Theranos. Holmes and Balwani were already together. At the end of 2005, Holmes and Balwani were living with Balwani in the city of Palo Alto, where Holmes owned a home.
People who invested in Theranos didn’t know about Holmes and Balwani’s relationship as the company grew. Balwani, on the other hand, was focused on his own work. He had started a multi-million dollar company that ended up being sold for $40 million. Soon after, however, he joined his girlfriend at her job at her company.
Sunny Balwani Start Working at Theranos
Balwani was hired as president and CEO of Theranos in 2009, even though he didn’t have any previous experience in medicine. In the end, it became clear to employees that Balwani’s real job at the company was to be an enforcer.
It was a job for Balwani to keep an eye on the company, says Nick Bilton, who wrote a series of investigative stories for Vanity Fair about Theranos. In emails and in person, Balwani would tell employees who doubted the accuracy of the company’s blood-testing technology that they were wrong, Bilton said, “He ensured that scientists and engineers at Theranos did not talk to one another about their work.”
Their Breakup:
Holmes and Balwani broke up in 2016, just as Theranos started to fall apart. At the time, Balwani said he was leaving the company after seven years as its COO (however, some reports claim he was fired). FBI, FDA, and CMS are all looking into Theranos and its testing facilities, as well as the company’s CEO, Holmes. He left in the middle of these investigations.
Holmes and Balwani were banned from ever owning or running a blood testing lab again after these investigations. As part of a long-running scam, Balwani and Holmes raised more than $700 million from investors by exaggerating or making false claims about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance. They were charged with securities fraud by the SEC in March 2018. Holmes agreed to settle this case privately. Balwani, on the other hand, was still fighting these charges as of 2019.
After he was charged with fraud, Balwani was also charged with crimes today. Nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud were found against president Balwani and Holmes in 2018. Besides, Holmes was found guilty of fraud in 2022. Balwani’s trial isn’t until how long after that.
Sunny Balwani’s trial
It started on March 9, 2022, two months after Balwani’s ex was found guilty of four counts of defrauding investors. Balwani, who was the president and CEO of Theranos, has been charged with the same crimes as Holmes. He has pleaded not guilty, but Holmes has already been found guilty.
Holmes told the court months before Balwani’s trial that her ex-boyfriend was verbally and sexually abusive when they were together. This raises questions about how Balwani’s trial will be different from Holmes’s.
In 2021, Holmes told a court that he told her that she didn’t know what she was doing in business, that her beliefs were wrong, that he was shocked by her mediocrity, that if she followed her instincts, she was going to fail, and that she needed to kill the person she was in order to become a successful entrepreneur. In the company, he would tell me not to sleep much, eat only foods that would make me pure, and drink only water.
“He would get very angry with me, and sometimes he would come upstairs to our bedroom and make me have sex with him even though I didn’t want to, because he wanted me to know that he still loved me.” In business, he had taught me everything I thought I knew about it, and I thought he was the best person I knew. I think I didn’t question him in the way I would have if I had. Balwani, on the other hand, says that he doesn’t believe these stories.
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