Who is Helmy Eltoukhy? Net worth and companies amid Sheffield United takeover latest

Helmy Eltoukhy is one of the individuals involved in the potential Sheffield United takeover from a USA-based consortium. The group are looking to take control of the Blades from Prince Abdullah. Here is everything you need to know about Eltoukhy....

Who is Helmy Eltoukhy?

Eltoukhy is the founder and CEO of the Guardant Health company which produces tests to detect cancer from blood samples. They are based in California.

Early life

Eltoukhy graduated from Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California, back in 1997 before heading to Stanford University to study Electrical engineering. He then followed on with a masters and a doctorate.

Companies and net worth

He formed his own company called Avantome with Mostafa Ronaghi in 2007 after working at Stanford University’s Genome Technology Centre. It was acquired 12 months later by Illumina, Inc for $60 million, as per Forbes.

He then spent four years working in their research labs and has this to say in an interview about that time: “It was a great time, obviously, in their history. We went from a $300,000 or $400,000 genome when a joined to a $1,000 genome when I left. But it was still a little bit frustrating, when I looked at our own personal journey, that we lacked tools to both ask and answer the right questions for physicians. [There was] a lot of great progress on the research side, but not a lot of it was moving the needle on the clinical side.”

Eltoukhy founded Guardant Health with AmirAli Talasaz. The company has a market cap valued in the billions, while US trading source Benzinga currently estimates his net worth as $439million, based on his shareholding in Guardant.

Eltoukhy was included in Time Magazine’s inaugural 50 Most Influential People in Healthcare in 2018. He has also been a guest speaker at the World Economic Forum.

Previous comments

He said in an interview with Sequoia: “I’m constantly learning how to be a more effective communicator, particularly in terms of presentations and public speaking. Good communication is crucial for pretty much everything if you want to make a real impact, because it doesn’t matter how good your ideas are if you can’t persuade other people to believe in them.

“I try to take lessons from anywhere I can. I read books, I’ve worked with coaches, and I study other people who are great communicators. If they persuade me, then there’s probably something I can learn from them and incorporate into my own style. Watching President Obama speak is like a master class, especially when you see how he progressed from the beginning of his first term to the end of his time in office. The last couple of speeches he gave were particularly spectacular. I’m still quite the novice so there’s a lot to learn from him and many others.”

Sheffield United latest

Sheffield United’s takeover continues to bubble away behind the scenes. In the meantime, they are now in the international break after beating rivals Sheffield Wednesday 1-0 last time out at Bramall Lane.