{
  "id": 14935618,
  "title": "You can now sit at Elizabeth Holmes’s desk",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/16/you-can-now-sit-at-elizabeth-holmess-desk",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-10-16T10:30:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Fast Company",
    "slug": "fast-company",
    "url": "https://www.fastcompany.com/91624372/elizabeth-holmes-desk-theranos-world-bo-lau"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The tech industry enjoys a good story about a founder, often a young college dropout with minimalistic style, obsessive habits, and eccentric behavior, making them captivating figures. Few narratives have managed to attract audiences as profoundly as that of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who promised a world of needleless blood tests but delivered little more than a persona donning Steve Jobs-inspired outfits and an unnaturally deep voice. She remains in the spotlight once again, thanks to an upcoming Nathan Fielder documentary revisiting her case, set to release on October 16. In anticipation of the film, a new website has emerged, offering users a virtual tour of Holmes's office at Theranos headquarters. Named Theranos.World, the website recreates her glass-enclosed office, complete with motivational posters and the company's circular logo on the walls. Designed by software engineer Bo Lau, the project showcases how AI can facilitate the creation of highly detailed interactive worlds, a task that would have typically taken months or years to accomplish manually. The desk is adorned with items from Holmes's time as a founder, including a MacBook Air, an iPhone, an Edison blood-testing machine, a collection of books like The Odyssey and Moby Dick, and branded company merchandise. Lau, who now heads developer relations at AI document processing platform Extend, launched the project after a social media post garnered almost 20,000 views, leading to interest in turning it into a formal endeavor. She secured screenings of the documentary in San Francisco and New York, just ahead of its release. While the site draws inspiration from Hulu's The Dropout, a show about the Theranos case, Lau had to rely on screengrabs from the show and podcasts to understand Holmes's behavior. The virtual office includes interactive elements such as a green juice to \"sip\" and a playlist featuring songs from the show's soundtrack and mid-2000s rap music, reflecting Holmes's known preferences. Lau used Exempt AI agents to download publicly available Theranos documents, Instinct AI to find relevant images, and GPT-6 Astra to generate the designs, employing the most powerful model at her disposal due to her work account. Beyond being a fun creative exercise, the deep dive into Holmes's universe highlights some of the more toxic aspects of the tech world, particularly the tendency for venture capitalists to idolize young founders.",
  "summary": "The tech world relishes a good founder story. These figures are often young college dropouts with minimalist wardrobes, obsessive behaviors, and eccentric (and often flat out bizarre) tendencies—perfect objects of fascination. But few sagas have captivated audiences quite as intensely as that of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. The wide-eyed CEO promised a world of needleless blood tests, yet…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Handelsblatt",
        "title": "Medizinprodukte: Bosch baut die Maschine, die Elizabeth Holmes nie bauen konnte",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/16/medizinprodukte-bosch-baut-die-maschine-die-elizabeth-holmes-nie",
        "published": "2026-10-16T11:02:41.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}