‘OUT FOR BLOOD’

Elizabeth Holmes Regrets That Notorious Fortune Mag Cover

She said on the stand, “I think I could’ve handled communications” differently with the journalist who wrote the glowing profile of her.

Elizabeth Holmes, taking the witness stand again in her trial on fraud charges, said she regretted how things went down with a rapturous 2014 profile of her in Fortune magazine that propelled her to fame. The prosecution in the case asked Holmes if what she told journalist Roger Parloff—that Theranos could at the time run 200 different blood tests with just a drop of blood—was true. She answered Tuesday, “I don’t think it is now.” In the Fortune interview, which ran under the headline “This CEO Is out for Blood,” Holmes also said that Theranos’ blood analysis machines were just as reliable as machines made by more established companies, a key claim later demonstrated to be false. She included the article in binders and presentations sent to investors. She said on the stand, “I think I could’ve handled communications” differently with the journalist. Holmes posed for the cover of Fortune in 2014 in her trademark black turtleneck, and she would later grace the covers of Forbes and Inc. The latter called her “the next Steve Jobs.”