Updated 2025-05-12T18:54:17Z
- Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder convicted of fraud, shares two kids with William "Billy" Evans.
- Evans is reportedly launching his own blood-testing startup now, with the imprisoned Holmes advising him.
- Here's what we know about Evans.
Elizabeth Holmes is infamous for the spectacular rise and fall of her blood-testing startup, Theranos, that saw her go to prison for fraud. Now, her partner is reportedly launching his own blood-testing startup.
William "Billy" Evans, with whom Holmes shares two children, is heir to a chain of hotels in California and was her daily companion at her monthslong trial. According to reports, his latest venture is a blood-testing startup, like Theranos, and Holmes is giving him advice from behind bars as she serves a years-long sentence in a Texas women's prison.
Here's everything we know about Billy Evans, Elizabeth Holmes' partner:
William "Billy" Evans grew up near San Diego, California.
He's one of three children born to his parents, Susan and William L. Evans, according to the Daily Mail.
The Evans family has lived in the San Diego area for generations.
Billy Evans' grandparents, Anne and William D. Evans, founded a hotel management group in 1953 called Evans Hotels, according to the group's website. The group manages three properties in the San Diego area.
After William D. Evans died in 1984, his widow, Anne, added two of her children to the Evans Hotels management team.
One of them was William L. Evans, who is Billy Evans' father.
Billy Evans attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He graduated in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in economics. During summers between school, Evans worked at various financial and consulting companies in California, according to a version of his LinkedIn profile that has since been modified. He was also a student brand manager at Red Bull while at MIT.
While at MIT, Evans studied abroad in China on a full scholarship, his LinkedIn said.
He studied Chinese language and literature at Fudan University in Shanghai.
After graduating from MIT, Evans reportedly tried to launch a healthcare startup for transporting wealthy Chinese people to the US for "concierge medical attention."
Although he studied Chinese in college, Evans wasn't fluent in the language, and the idea never took off, according to the New York Post.
After that startup idea failed, Evans worked at LinkedIn.
He was a strategy and analytics leadership program analyst there until February 2017.
Evans then moved to Luminar Technologies, a startup working on radar and sensor technology for autonomous cars.
His LinkedIn said he was a manager of special projects there, but employees told the New York Post he was fond of "wandering around with absolute purpose, but no one knew what that purpose was."
Evans was reportedly close with Luminar's CEO, Austin Russell. He acted as Russell's "secret police" who would "strut around the office and tell people what to do," the Post reported.
Holmes and Evans met in 2017, according to a letter Evans wrote.
In November 2022, Holmes' attorneys filed 130 such letters from friends and family seeking leniency in her sentencing.
In his, Evans, who is eight years younger than Holmes, talked about the couple's story, including his initial hesitation to pursue a relationship with Holmes, and gave a glimpse into their private lives throughout the trial as he made his plea for a lighter sentence.
Evans says they "immediately fell in love."
They met in San Francisco at a house party during Fleet Week to benefit wounded warriors, according to The New York Times. Holmes spoke with the Times for a profile in May 2023 in her first interview since 2016. Evans had gone to get ice for a party at his apartment but dropped by the benefit, where a mutual friend introduced him to Holmes, and they talked for three hours, per the Times.
"My friends were texting, 'Where are you? We're here," Evans told the Times. "To say we immediately fell in love isn't an overstatement."
Evans wrote in his letter to the judge that he and Holmes "walked away from the others, and it was as if the rest of the world ceased to exist."
He said Holmes wore a sunhat and oversized glasses to try to "stay under the radar," and he didn't initially recognize her as they spoke.
"It was strange to feel so comfortable and willing to share with someone who I didn't know. I was captivated by her childish wonder and authenticity," he added in his letter. "We spoke for hours, I lost track of time, and even if I didn't know it ... I fell in love. She pulled out her business card, scribbled her personal cell on the back and then it clicked who she was."
Evans said they remained "just friends" for six months, writing, "I was admittedly hesitant to dive in given all that had been said, Liz had been consistently vilified in every piece of media imaginable."
"The more I got to know her the more I loved who she was," he continued in his letter to the judge. "It was not long before the friendship turned into something more."
The two were first spotted in public together in August 2018.
They were seen at Burning Man, the arts festival in the Nevada desert, just days before Theranos fully shut down, according to the Daily Mail.
Evans left his job at Luminar in January 2019.
Luminar employees told the Post they suspect the reason was the potentially bad publicity surrounding Evans' relationship with Holmes.
Today, Evans says he does "a lot of different stuff."
When asked by the Times' reporter, Amy Chozick, what he does for work, he offered vaguely, "A lot of different stuff — investing, starting companies."
Vanity Fair reported in February 2019 that Holmes and Evans had gotten engaged.
That June, Vanity Fair reported that Holmes and Evans had tied the knot in a secretive wedding ceremony.
Evans' parents were reportedly "flabbergasted" by their son's decision to marry Holmes, the Post reported.
Evans was a fixture in Holmes' trial.
He accompanied her to court daily and was a key part of one of her Hail Mary attempts to avoid prison.
After Holmes was convicted, she made several attempts to avoid prison time.
As the clock was running out with a scheduled sentencing date fast approaching, she requested a new trial on the grounds that a key government witness visited her home in August 2022 expressing regrets that his testimony had helped convict her.
The witness was Adam Rosendorff, who was Theranos' lab director from April 2013 to November 2014. Holmes' motion relied heavily on a recollection of the encounter documented by Evans, who spoke with Rosendorff when he appeared at their home.
In an email to Holmes' attorneys recalling his encounter with Rosendorff, Evans wrote: "He said he feels guilty, it seemed like he was hurting. He said when he was called as a witness he tried to answer the questions honestly but that the prosecutors tried to make everybody look bad (in the company). He said that the government made things sound worse than they were when he was up on the stand during his testimony. He said he felt like he had done something wrong. And that this was weighing on him, He said he was having trouble sleeping."
The judge agreed to postpone Holmes' sentencing to hear Rosendorff out, giving Holmes a small victory, but it backfired on her when Rosendorff stood by his testimony in the hearing, saying, "She needs to pay her debt to society."
Rosendorff explained that he'd felt bad for Holmes because of the possibility that a child would grow up without a mother, but he stressed that his testimony was accurate.
Evans' dad, William L. Evans even made headlines at Holmes' trial one day.
NPR reported in September that a man who identified himself as a "concerned citizen" named Hanson defended Holmes to news reporters at her trial; in actuality, NPR reports, the man was the older Evans.
In May 2023, Holmes began her prison sentence.
She reported to Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, a minimum-security women's prison located about 100 miles from Houston, where she grew up.
During her sentence, she'll be separated from Evans and their two children, a son born in July 2021 and a daughter born in February 2023.
As for Evans, it seems his next venture is a blood-testing startup of his own.
The New York Times and NPR report that he's launched a blood-testing startup called Haemanthus that has raised millions and has roughly a dozen employees.
Holmes is giving him advice on the new venture but doesn't plan to have a formal role at the startup, according to NPR. As part of a settlement with the SEC in 2018, Holmes is banned from serving as an officer or director of a public company for a decade.
Evan's LinkedIn lists his current experience as working at a "Not So Stealth Startup" since October 2022.
