A Cautionary Tale Revisited
The documentary You Can See Everything, which captures disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in the final weeks before she reported to prison, has become one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all time—and it is reigniting a national conversation. Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the film deliberately declines to cast Holmes as either a master manipulator or a victim. Instead, it highlights her uncanny, almost hypnotic ability to elicit pity—even from people fully aware of her crimes.
Tyler Shultz Didn't Need the Film
Tyler Shultz had already made up his mind about Holmes long before the documentary debuted. Shultz's first job out of college was at Theranos, where he became a key whistleblower exposing the company's dangerously inaccurate blood-testing devices. Those devices reached Walgreens stores and delivered faulty results to real patients. Theranos climbed to a peak valuation of roughly $10 billion even though its technology never actually worked—the company used its own machines for only a fraction of tests and outsourced the rest to third-party equipment.
There is little reason to keep discussing Holmes—her case is closed and she is serving time in federal prison—yet her con artistry has fascinated the media, this writer included, for the past decade. As Shultz put it in an interview with The San Francisco Standard, "the only reason we're talking about Elizabeth Holmes right now is because she wants us to be talking about Elizabeth Holmes right now."
Old Lessons for a New Bubble
The Theranos cautionary tale takes on fresh significance as the AI era reaches its peak—when companies that have never turned a profit are raising capital at trillion-dollar valuations.
"I think the days of having a thirty-minute coffee with someone and sending them $100,000 should be over. Elizabeth took that model and scaled it to $100 million," Shultz told the SF Standard.
His grandfather, former U.S. Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury George Shultz, was himself a notable investor and board member at Theranos.
"I believe that what [Holmes] did was raise the biggest angel round of funding of all time, but even at the smaller levels, I think investors need to recognize that when they put that type of money in someone's hands, they are giving them tremendous power," he added.
Theranos' funding frequently came from individual investors such as the DeVos and Walton families rather than from venture firms. The company withheld scientific evidence that its machines worked, citing concerns about revealing trade secrets—a stance that deterred many top Silicon Valley venture capitalists.
When Theranos' fraud was uncovered, it served as a shrill wake-up call for investors to prioritize due diligence. In the AI era, Shultz worries those lessons may be forgotten.
"A huge danger with AI is that I think it is really hard to do ..." he began, warning that the technology's complexity makes it an ideal cover for deception.
The takeaway: As capital floods into AI at unprecedented valuations, Shultz's warning is blunt—the hype cycle is "a great opportunity to go deceive people." The safeguards that Theranos exposed as missing—independent verification, transparent evidence, and skeptical investors—matter more than ever in 2026.
via TechCrunch AI