Billy Evans, the partner of convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, previously worked at Luminar Technologies—an automotive technology startup that ultimately filed for bankruptcy—before launching his own biotech venture focused on at-home diagnostics. This new enterprise has sparked fresh comparisons to Theranos following the release of the documentary You Can See Everything.

According to past reporting by the New York Times and Business Insider based on his LinkedIn profile, Evans served as a special projects manager at Luminar from 2017 to January 2019. His profile has since been altered to remove his previous employment history, retaining only Haemanthus, the diagnostic startup he established in 2022.

The Decline of Luminar Technologies

Luminar filed for bankruptcy in December 2025 following a wave of layoffs, reports of cash burn, financial mismanagement, executive departures, and a high-profile legal battle with Volvo. The automaker, a major client, accused Luminar—developer of lidar sensors designed to help autonomous vehicles detect obstacles—of failing to meet its contractual obligations.

In the wake of these financial troubles, Quantum Computing Inc. acquired Luminar Semiconductor in February for $110 million, while MicroVision purchased its lidar division the previous month for $33 million.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015, Evans worked as a strategy and leadership program analyst at LinkedIn until February 2017 before joining Luminar, records of his earlier professional history show.

Thrust Into the Spotlight

Evans has stepped back into the public eye due to Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s documentary, You Can See Everything, which explores his relationship with Holmes. The pair met in 2017 at a gathering while Holmes was under federal investigation, though she was not officially indicted for fraud until 2018.

His startup, Haemanthus, is developing compact devices intended to analyze blood, urine, and saliva. The venture has explicitly stated it is not “Theranos 2.0,” despite sharing similar overarching diagnostic ambitions. Nonetheless, many viewers of the documentary believe the venture mirrors Theranos under a different guise.

Founded by Austin Russell in 2012, Luminar emerged as a prominent competitor in the race to commercialize lidar, a laser-based mapping and detection technology for vehicles. Evans departed the company years before its collapse, eventually shifting into the biotech sector with the 2022 launch of Haemanthus, which aims to utilize Raman spectroscopy to study molecular light interactions. Currently, public information regarding Haemanthus remains sparse, as the company operates without a website and has yet to release any commercial products.

Personal Life and Defense of Holmes

Evans hails from the family that founded Evans Hotels, a Southern California hospitality chain based in San Diego, though the New York Times reported he holds no equity or employment role within the family business despite its designation as family-owned.

Sharing two children with Holmes, Evans has lived with them in Austin, Texas, while Holmes serves her sentence at a minimum-security federal women's camp in Bryan, Texas. A fierce defender of her public image, Evans was granted power of attorney when she began her imprisonment. The documentary reveals that he manages her social media presence, claiming authorship of roughly 80% of the comments on her X account, and declares in the film, “I’m going to ruin their lives,” referring broadly to individuals he holds responsible for wronging her.

Public data regarding Evans' specific duties and the outcomes of projects he managed at Luminar is largely unavailable. While the New York Post reported in 2019, citing an ex-colleague, that he maintained a close relationship with founder Austin Russell, no further details regarding his role or relationship have been made public. He exited the firm years ahead of its bankruptcy filing.