She had been previously ordered to surrender to authorities on April 27 by Davila, who sentenced her in November.

Davila will now set a new date for Holmes, 39, to leave her current home in the San Diego area and report to prison.

The punishment will separate Holmes from her current partner, William “Billy” Evans, their one-year-old son, William, and three-month-old daughter, Invicta.

Holmes’ pregnancy with Invicta - Latin for “invincible”, or “undefeated” - began after a jury convicted her on four counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022.

Davila has recommended that Holmes serve her sentence at a women’s prison in Bryan, Texas. It has not been disclosed whether the federal Bureau of Prisons accepted Davila’s recommendation or assigned Holmes to another facility.

Balwani, 57, began a nearly 13-year prison sentence in April after being convicted on 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy last July. He was incarcerated in a Southern California prison last month after losing a similar effort to remain free on bail while appealing his conviction.

The verdict against Holmes came after a 46 days of trial testimony and other evidence that cast a spotlight on a culture of greed and hubris that infected Silicon Valley as technology became a more pervasive influence on society and the economy during the past 20 years.

The trial’s most riveting moments unfolded when Holmes took the witness stand to testify in her own defence.

Besides telling how she founded Theranos as a teenager after dropping out of Stanford University in 2003, Holmes accused Balwani of abusing her emotionally and sexually.

She also asserted she never stopped believing Theranos would revolutionise healthcare with a technology that she promised would be able to scan for hundreds of diseases and other potential problems with just a few drops of blood.

While pursuing that audacious ambition, Holmes raised nearly US$1 billion from a list of well-heeled investors that included Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Those sophisticated investors all lost their money after a Wall Street Journal investigation and regulatory reviews exposed dangerous flaws in Theranos’ technology.

In his restitution ruling, Davila determined that Holmes and Balwani should pay Murdoch US$125 million - by far the most among the investors listed in his order.

The restitution also requires the co-conspirators in the Theranos scam to pay US$40 million to Walgreens, which became an investor in the start-up after agreeing to provide some of the flawed blood tests in its pharmacies in 2013.

Another US$14.5 million is owed to Safeway, which had also agreed to be a Theranos business partner before backing out.

In separate hearings, lawyers for Holmes and Balwani tried to persuade Davila their respective clients should be required to pay little, if anything.

Prosecutors had been pushing for a restitution penalty in the US$800 million range. Both Holmes - whose stake in Theranos was once valued at US$4.5 billion - and Balwani - whose holdings were once valued around US$500 million - have indicated they are nearly broke after running up millions of dollar in legal bills while proclaiming their innocence.

Holmes’s lawyers have been fighting her conviction on grounds of alleged mistakes and misconduct that occurred during her trial. They have also contended errors and abuses that biased the jury were so egregious that she should be allowed to stay out of prison while the appeal unfolds - a request that has now been rebuffed by both Davila and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.