Theranos.
Theranos · Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani · Healthcare
A blood-testing device that promised hundreds of results from a fingerprick and could not deliver them.
$0
raised
3 yrs 1 mo
2013–2016
Regulatory
Ruled out by law or a regulator
Burned $700M on a test that did not work.
TLDR
Theranos raised roughly $700 million on the claim that its Edison analyser could run a wide panel of diagnostic tests from a few drops of blood, and put the service into retail pharmacies in Arizona.
Reporting by The Wall Street Journal in 2015, followed by federal inspections, established that most tests were being run on conventional third-party machines and that the proprietary device's results were unreliable. Regulators revoked the company's laboratory certification in 2016, its clinical operations closed, and criminal fraud convictions followed for its two most senior executives.
Unlike most entries here, this was not a market misread. The product did not work, and the failure was in continuing to sell it anyway.
Sources & citations