Theranos fraud: Who is Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani?

Who is Sunny Balwani? The name splashed across headlines as Silicon Valley's most watched trial of Elizabeth Holmes' concluded with a conviction that could send the startup founder to jail for 20 years.

Watch| Elizabeth Holmes' conviction & the Theranos fraud, everything you need to know about this startup scam

Holmes shocked the courtroom when she gave an emotional testimony that she suffered emotional and sexual abuse for a decade by Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her boyfriend who was also the president of Theranos. He also faces multiple counts of fraud allegations and is up for trial this month.

Balwani’s early career was in software. He was a Northern California sales manager for Microsoft, selling the company’s products to executives at other firms. Holmes met Balwani in 1999 when she was 18 and he was 38. Holmes started Theranos in 2003 and just six years later Balwani joined as its president, despite having no background in medicine or pharmaceuticals.

Little is known about Sunny, whose given name is Ramesh had a 12 year relationship with now branded felon Holmes. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur’s relationship with her ex-boyfriend Balwani is documented in podcast The Dropout and book Bad Blood by John Carreyrou.

While Balwani has denied the abuse claims, he wasn’t in the courtroom to defend himself because he faces a separate trial over the same fraud charges. “He impacted everything about who I was, and I don’t fully understand that,” Holmes told the jury during the trial.