Dive Brief:
- In mid-October, Theranos filed for authorization to sell stock and raise roughly $200 million.
- Three days later, The Wall Street Journal published an article questioning the efficacy and integrity of Theranos' blood-testing technology and business practices.
- It's unclear whether the stock has been sold.
Dive Insight:
Theranos has been effective at fundraising using several techniques, including increasing the float after filing a stock authorization. One example: In February 2014, Theranos filed a series C-22 filing of 11.7 million series C-2 shares at $17 per share, and subsequently increasing it in January 2015 to 58.8 million shares at the same price. Since then, Theranos has said that it only issued 32.2 million shares of the authorized C-2 stock.
Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, ATA Ventures, Tako Ventures, former board member Don Lucas and Oracle founder Larry Ellison, BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, Continental Properties Co., Esoom Enterprise (Taiwan), Jupiter Partners, Palmieri Trust, Partner Fund Management, Dixon Doll, Ray Bingham and B.J. Cassin, according to Fortune.
Theranos does not comment on its fundraising, and investors are basically being quiet about their investment in Theranos. At this point, it makes sense that Theranos would seek more money to fund its efforts to gain approval for more than 200 tests, as well as its basic "nanotainer" finger-prick, blood-testing technology.