Elizabeth Holmes’s partner pitches health-check startup

Convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’s partner, Billy Evans, is pitching his own diagnostics startup, Haemanthus, aiming to raise over $50 million, according to the New York Times.

Evans is an heir to a California hotel fortune and shares two children with Holmes.

His company, named after the blood lily flower, plans to start with disease testing for pets before moving on to humans. Its prototype eerily resembles Theranos’s infamous Edison device and claims to use lasers to scan blood, saliva and urine.

Evans has raised $3.5 million from friends and family and is seeking an additional $15 million from high-net-worth individuals in Austin and the Bay Area. He has avoided mentioning Holmes to potential investors.

His wife, Holmes, the founder of failed startup Theranos, is serving an 11-year prison sentence for defrauding Silicon Valley investors of nearly $1 billion with fake technology.