Theranos deceived the FDA and the SEC, government agencies who build their reputation on beeing harsh towards deception.
uBeam deceived venture capitalists..., VCs have a reputation to keep, preventing them from sending CEOs to jail.
VC essentially tell their investors
We can figure out the companies that have a high chance of succeeding (so they can't admit some 25 yo....)
Any CEO is dying to get our money (so they can't send a CEO to jail).
That is why the same VCs invested ~$25m, after they knew nothing works, and almost immediately (half a year start to finish) moved to replace the CEO.
From a VC point of view.
All the old investments in the company are worthless.
But the VC reputation is still intact.
Lets invest additional $25m (of somebody else's money) and sell the company for $27m (probably doable), and get our $25m back (due to liquidation preference) + save our reputation (this would be marked as an exit).
To sell the company for $27m, they needed to replace the inexperienced CEO with an experienced one. Note this happened only ~6months after the investment (e.g. immediately).
I believe they also figured out it would never charge a phone, but, they hope the company could be sold for some ~$10-30 million while there is still some $15-18 million in the bank so they can get their money back + keep their reputation.
If they sell it when ~$18m are in the bank, they need to find a sucker who will buy the IP and lab equipment for $10m, this is certainly doable (although it's a waste of $10m).
Just a few points:
I don't think they raised $25m in the last round, that was just the number of the equity conversion form submitted to the SEC which I believe included the money from the convertible note round of 2015. I think that was in the $12 to $14m range so my suspicion is that the last round was closer to an actual $11m. Given expenses, I'd say they have $7m to $8m in the bank right now.
I don't know who put in to that round other than OurCrowd and UpFront. Before they realised it was public and hid it, OurCrowd's crowdfunding total for uBeam was around $5.7m, so I'd guess you'd have OurCrowd in for ~$6m, UpFront for ~$5m, and maybe $1m for others. (yeah I know that adds to 12, it's all approx).
The COO brought in about a year ago left in May, after only 9 months. He appeared to be not only a future CEO choice, but history with Intellectual Ventures points to him being someone to monetize the IP, and was likely on a "% of licensing deal" payout. If he looked at the company and walked, there's no value in it worth him spending more time on. Imagine he got 10% of any deal - if he can sell that IP or the company for $10 to $30m, he's going to hang on a year. Walking at 9 months, huge red flag. No significant value.
I also have not seen any new patents since not long after I left the company, 3 years ago. All submitted patents past a year ago should be public, so what we see now is basically what they went into the last fundraising effort with. I'm not expecting a lot more in the pipeline. The fundamental patent on acoustic wireless power transfer is from Charych in 2003.
I'll also bet that the investors in the last round, especially the lead, bent uBeam over a barrel and got really good terms, such as a preference on any sale, or at the least tranched the payment. They will make a multiple of their investment before everyone else gets scraps if that's the case. BTW note of the $37m or so uBeam raised, around half of it was from crowdfunding sources if my numbers are right. Thanks mom and pop!
Staff will likely be fleeing soon, if they aren't already interviewing I'd be stunned. No value there, besides the MBA class see them as replaceable cogs. I'd expect they'd have someone else in already, or soon, to evaluate the company IP value. My guess is the number they come up with is not nearly as high as 8 figures, and will disappoint the VCs. The IP might have been worth something if there was a product, but no such luck. Used equipment is rarely worth bothering with. It won't stop them trying to sell it for a few months, but there's a reason I suggested the best return was to just give the staff 60 days notice, close it down, and return the money for about 20c on the dollar average (heavily weighted to certain investors).