The documentary breakout and his day job

Billy Evans became the breakout character of You Can See Everything, the documentary about him and Elizabeth Holmes, released by A24 on October sixteenth. Now attention is turning to his startup, Haemanthus.

What Haemanthus claims to do

Haemanthus, based in Austin, says it can use lasers to detect disease in blood, saliva, and urine. Interest in the company surged after the documentary's release on October sixteenth.

What Haemanthus has and hasn't shown

Haemanthus has reportedly raised as much as twenty million dollars and holds at least one granted patent. It does not have a product customers can buy or published data showing its technology works.

Who Billy Evans is

Evans, thirty-four, is a grandson of William and Anne Evans, who founded Evans Hotels in San Diego in nineteen fifty-three. Evans Hotels said in October that Billy Evans is neither an employee nor a shareholder.

Evans' work history before Haemanthus

Evans graduated from MIT in twenty fifteen with a degree in economics. He worked at LinkedIn, then as a special projects manager at Luminar Technologies, a lidar startup, from twenty seventeen until January twenty nineteen.

How Evans and Holmes met

Evans met Holmes at a party in twenty seventeen, when Theranos was already engulfed in scandal. They have two children, William, five, and Invicta, three. Holmes told People the couple never legally married.

“Maybe we'll get married someday, but our bond is more than a piece of paper.”

How Haemanthus says it works

According to marketing materials, Haemanthus' device uses a laser to scan biological samples on a molecular level, identify biomarkers such as glucose and hormones within seconds, and use AI to detect cancer and infections.

The underlying technique is not new

Haemanthus uses Raman spectroscopy, a long-established way to identify chemicals by shining light on a sample and reading the scattered signal. Blood is a much harder problem because target molecules are present in tiny amounts.

How it differs from Theranos

Theranos claimed it could run conventional lab tests on a miniaturized machine using a few drops of blood. Haemanthus wrote on X in May twenty twenty-five that it uses a fundamentally different approach.

“Theranos attempted to miniaturize existing tests.”

The patent and the missing CTO

A Raman spectroscopy patent assigned to Haemanthus and granted in January twenty twenty-five names two inventors, one of them former CTO Joseph LaChapelle. Several early staffers, including LaChapelle, worked with Evans at Luminar.

LaChapelle's departure and conflicting accounts

LaChapelle told Forbes he left in March, citing a conflict of interest with a stealth startup he had founded.Evans told someone else he had let the CTO go.

“I resigned on March sixteen, twenty twenty-six, due to a conflict of interest associated with a stealth startup I had founded prior to Haemanthus.”

Holmes' involvement remains unclear

Holmes is serving an eleven-year sentence at a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas. NPR reported in May twenty twenty-five that Holmes had been advising Evans from prison, though Haemanthus denied this on X, saying…