Person attributes
Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani (born June 13, 1965) is an American businessman who is the former president and chief operating officer of Theranos, which was a privately held health technology company founded by his then-girlfriend Elizabeth Holmes. Theranos claimed to have devised a revolutionary blood test that used very small amounts of blood such as that which can be extracted from a fingerstick. Starting in 2015, Theranos came under criticism in the media due to its questionable claims and practices. The company was eventually liquidated. Balwani and Holmes were criminally charged by federal authorities for operating the business as a multi-million-dollar scheme to defraud investors and patients. Holmes was found guilty and is awaiting sentencing. Balwani's trial began in March 2022.
Balwani worked for Lotus Software and Microsoft before 1998, when he helped to create CommerceBid, a software development company that helped businesses buy and sell items over the burgeoning Internet. In 1999, the company was purchased by Commerce One, another business development software company with a high valuation. The buyout was done entirely with stock, and Balwani joined the board of the new company. In July 2000, Balwani sold his shares in Commerce One, netting nearly $40 million shortly before the company went out of business, just before the dot com bubble burst. He later went back to school and received a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. He spent another four years in a computer science graduate program at Stanford University, but dropped out in 2008.
While enrolled at Berkeley, Balwani, who was 37 at the time, met Elizabeth Holmes, who was 18 and in her senior year of high school. Holmes pursued an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at Stanford, but later dropped out to focus full-time on Theranos.
