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| VIEW EVENT INFORMATION: Elizabeth Holmes |
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Elizabeth Holmes Just Put Theranos’s Palo Alto Headquarters Up For Rent |
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About the person Elizabeth Holmes:
Art: Corporation
Genres: CEO, Co-Founder, Entrepreneur, Executive, Founder, Management, President, Health Care, Health-Technology, Medical Service |
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Notable Organizations: Vanity Fair, Theranos
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| With the Theranos bubble rapidly running out of air, the once high-flying blood-testing company has decided to sublease its Palo Alto headquarters. Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, whose reporting on the company over the past two years uncovered significant issues with the company’s blood-testing devices—kicking off a number of federal investigations and civil lawsuits—first noted the listing in a tweet Tuesday night. “How long before a bankruptcy filing?” he mused, posting a link to a property listing for 1701 Page Mill Road, Theranos’s Palo Alto headquarters.
The rental rate is listed as “negotiable.” Here’s the listing:
Theranos confirmed that it is considering renting out some or all of its office space. “Theranos continues to focus on effectively managing our resources as we progress towards the commercialization of the miniLab platform. Accordingly, the company has retained CBRE to explore subleasing options for all or portions of our Palo Alto facility,” the company told Business Insider in a statement. “Manufacturing will continue to be located in the Newark, CA facility.” The listing on CBRE’s Web site suggests that the 116,000-square-foot building could be rented out entirely, or divided into four parts and subleased.
Previously valued at $9 billion, Theranos has seen its fortune crumble, slashing the net worth of its founder, Elizabeth Holmes—once the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire—to virtually nothing. The company is running out of cash as it works through settlements with the likes of Walgreens, which partnered with Theranos in 2010, and with hedge fund Partner Fund Management, which alleged that Holmes had defrauded the firm into making a $96 million investment through “a series of lies.” (Theranos said in a statement at the time that the settlement “brings to a close the burden and expense of litigation and preserves resources to bring the miniLab platform to market.”)
As The Wall Street Journal reported last month, Theranos had $187 million in the bank in January, after burning through much of the $700 million it had raised since its 2003 founding. The company is spending about $10 million a month, now mostly on legal fees since cutting much of its staff from 900 employees to 220. Theranos and Holmes, who was barred for two years from running any clinical labs before settling with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and agreeing not to operate or own a clinical lab until 2019, have faced scrutiny and lawsuits in the wake of Carreyrou’s reporting. Until last year, Theranos’s proprietary Edison blood-testing machine was central to its business model; Edison was said to use only a small amount of someone’s blood to complete diagnostic tests. The company has since pivoted, focusing on developing its miniLab technology instead. Should Theranos sublease its entire Palo Alto headquarters, the remaining employees there would likely move to its Newark, California offices. |
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