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All-In · 2 min · Oct 15, 2026
Why Evans says his new company is not Theranos 2.0
Billy Evans
David FriedbergHost · CEO, Ohalo
Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.
About this segment
Evans describes Hamanthus, which uses Raman spectroscopy to build cheap biological sensors that produce data for AI. He says the Theranos 2.0 label sticks because it sells better than a story about photonics.
From “Elizabeth Holmes' Husband Billy Evans: The Trial, Prison & Nathan Fielder’s Documentary”, Oct 15, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
“the problem is these devices are millions of dollars many feet long super complicated to use.”
Takeaways
- Raman spectroscopy is established in labs but the devices cost millions
- Aim is cheap, widely distributed sensors that feed AI rich biological data
- He traces the press label to what drives clicks
In this episode
Full episode- 19:20How 13 counts and a point system turned into an 11-year sentence3:04
- 23:35Staying silent was Holmes' biggest mistake, says her husband1:19
- 36:46How the restitution and sentence math inflated her time1:51
39:13Why Evans says his new company is not Theranos 2.02:13
- 13:19Evans on the manipulation charge and the missed Walgreens revenue3:22Up next
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 39:16
What is the business you're building today and why is it not there in OTH 2.0? How did you get it? Is it an Elizabeth thing that you're kind of doing this for or with? Or how did this kind of come to be for you? Yeah, so my background is in the photonic space. I helped build a company called Luminar. We built LiDAR for autonomous vehicles using lasers. So I've got background in photonics. I did that for a handful of years.
- 39:40
And I found Elizabeth's mission incredibly compelling as I hope you all do. the idea that diagnostics are broken today they're way too expensive and we want to make it more accessible and cheaper and in the wake of Theranos failing very few people have tried to do something incredibly ambitious in that space so my company is called Hamanthus we are building a new layer of sensors to better understand biology so we use a technique called Raman spectroscopy in which we shine light through biological samples it creates a scattering effect where the light changes color and then you can interpret what chemical structures are within that sample and this is a really well-known technique people do it in research labs around the country the problem is these devices are millions of dollars many feet long
- 40:26
super complicated to use. So I'm taking a lot of the learnings from my work in the photonic space to make these cheaper and widely distributed so we can give artificial intelligence really rich and deep data sets for biology. Today most things are built for human doctors to understand and we're trying to create really deep data sets that that artificial intelligence can use to create correlations between all these disparate signals. So photon-based chemical detection, that can be used broadly in a bunch of different techniques. And so the Theranos 2.0 story may be a bit of a press. Yeah, I mean, look, what sells more? Like, Billy builds technology.
- 41:04
Raman spectroscopy devices. Yeah, it doesn't exactly drive clicks. So it's a lot easier to make it seem like Elizabeth Holmes is El Chapo running, you know, a diagnostics cartel from prison than it is to say Billy's building a nerdy company. Well, look, I appreciate you being with us today, Billy. I know we've talked a lot over the last year and a half to start to share your story.