Theranos, the US blood-testing company at the heart of a fraud scandal, will dissolve, according to reports.
At its height, the company was valued at $9bn (£7bn) for its “revolutionary” technology which claimed to be able to test for a range of diseases including cancer using just a few drops of blood, rather than a needle and syringe.
But in a recent email to investors chief executive David Taylor announced the company's dissolution, the Wall Street Journal reported.
It came after prosecutors announced criminal charges against founder Elizabeth Holmes in June, alleging that she defrauded investors, doctors and patients by knowingly overselling the abilities of Theranos’ technology.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that Theranos’ blood tests produce inaccurate results which put patients at risk.
Ms Holmes had raised $700m in funding, including from Rupert Murdoch and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
She had also assembled an all-star board which included the current US defence secretary, James Mattis, and two former secretaries of state — Henry Kissinger and George Shultz.
Ms Holmes and her business partner Ramesh Balwani have been charged by the DOJ with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud.
The criminal charges came after Ms Holmes settled civil charges made by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in March that she raised the $700m fraudulently
The SEC said Ms Holmes and Theranos deceived investors about the firm's technology and falsely claimed its products had been used by the US army in Afghanistan.
“The Theranos story is an important lesson for Silicon Valley,” said Jina Choi, director of the SEC’s San Francisco office, when the settlement was announced.
“Innovators who seek to revolutionize and disrupt an industry must tell investors the truth about what their technology can do today, not just what they hope it might do someday.”
Ms Holmes, 34, was named by Forbes in 2015 as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, based on the then valuation of the start-up at $9bn, and with her 50 per cent stake in Theranos giving her a net worth of $4.5bn.
