Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy (born August 9, 1985) is an American entrepreneur and politician. He founded Roivant Sciences, a Biotechnology pharma company in 2014 and was its CEO until 2021. Ramaswamy entered national politics as the youngest presidential candidate in the 2024 Republican primaries. He withdrew his bid and endorsed Donald Trump for the 2024 presidential election. In 2025, he launched his campaign for the 2026 Ohio governor's election and was endorsed by President Trump. He also received an endorsement from the Ohio Republican Party for his gubernatorial candidacy.
Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Indian Americans parents. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in biology in 2007. He earned a law degree from Yale University in 2013. Ramaswamy became an investment partner at a hedge fund, before founding Roivant Sciences in 2014. He also co-founded an investment firm, Strive Asset Management in 2022.
Ramaswamy largely remained apolitical until 2020, when he supported Donald Trump for the 2020 presidential election. In 2021, Ramaswamy wrote his first book, Woke Inc and appeared on cable networks arguing against leftist "woke" policies. He also became an active donor to the Republican Party. Ramaswamy briefly considered running in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Ohio.
Ramaswamy describes himself as a conservative American nationalist. He has criticized environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives, labeling them as social agendas that are detrimental for businesses. He opposes affirmative action, claiming that it violates Meritocracy principles. In April 2025, Forbes estimated Ramaswamy's net worth to be $1.1 billion; his wealth comes from biotech and financial businesses.
Ramaswamy was raised in Ohio. Growing up, Ramaswamy often attended the local Hindu temple in Dayton with his family. His Christian right piano teacher, who gave him private lessons from elementary through high school, also influenced his social views. He spent many summer vacations traveling to India with his parents. In high school, Ramaswamy was a nationally ranked tennis player.
In 2007, Ramaswamy graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in biology, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. At Harvard, he gained a reputation as a brash and confident libertarian. He was a member of the Harvard Political Union, becoming its president. He told The Harvard Crimson that he considered himself a contrarian who loved to debate. While in college, he performed Eminem covers and libertarian-themed rap music under the stage name and alter ego "Da Vek", and was an intern for the hedge fund Amaranth Advisors and investment bank Goldman Sachs. He wrote his senior thesis on the ethical questions raised by creating human-animal chimeras, earning him a Bowdoin Prize.
In 2011, Ramaswamy was awarded a post-graduate fellowship to attend law school by The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. Ramaswamy later said that by the time he attended Yale, he was already wealthy from his activities in the finance, pharmaceutical, and biotech industries; he said in 2023 that he had a net worth of around $15 million before graduating from law school. At Yale, he befriended fellow Ohio native and future U.S. Vice President JD Vance. He earned a Juris Doctor in 2013. In a 2023 interview, Ramaswamy said that he was a member of the campus Jewish intellectual discussion society Shabtai while a law student.
Ramaswamy worked at the hedge fund QVT Financial from 2007 to 2014. He was a partner and co-managed the firm's Biotechnology portfolio. QVT's biotech investments under Ramaswamy included stakes in Palatin Technologies, Concert Pharmaceuticals, Pharmasset, and Martin Shkreli's Retrophin. In a 2023 speech and in his book Woke Inc., Ramaswamy called Shkreli, whose company had greatly increased the cost of a life-saving drug, both "brilliant" and a pathological liar. He criticized the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecuting Shkreli, calling his fraud a victimless crime.
In 2015, Ramaswamy raised $360 million for the Roivant subsidiary Axovant Sciences in an attempt to market intepirdine as a drug for Alzheimer's disease. In December 2014, Axovant purchased the patent for intepirdine from GlaxoSmithKline (where the drug had failed four previous ) for $5 million, a small sum in the industry. Ramaswamy appeared on the cover of Forbes in 2015, and said his company would "be the highest return on investment endeavor ever taken up in the pharmaceutical industry." Before new clinical trials began, he engineered Axovant's initial public offering (IPO); it became a "Wall Street darling" and raised $315 million. The company's market value initially soared to almost $3 billion, although at the time it only had eight employees, including Ramaswamy's brother and mother. Ramaswamy took a massive payout after selling a portion of his shares in Roivant to Viking Global Investors. He claimed more than $37 million in capital gains in 2015. Ramaswamy said his company would be the "Berkshire Hathaway of drug development" and touted the drug as a "tremendous" opportunity that "could help millions" of patients, prompting some criticism that he was overpromising.
In September 2017, the company announced that intepirdine had failed in its large clinical trial. The company's value plunged; it lost 75% in one day and continued to decline afterward. Shareholders who lost money included various institutional investors, such as the California State Teachers' Retirement System pension fund. Ramaswamy was insulated from much of Axovant's losses because he held his stake through Roivant. The company abandoned intepirdine. In 2018, Ramaswamy said he had no regrets about how the company handled the drug; in subsequent years, he said he regretted the outcome but was annoyed by criticism of the company. Axovant thereafter attempted to reinvent itself as a gene therapy company, and dissolved in 2023.
In 2017, Roivant partnered with CITIC Private Equity of the Chinese state-owned CITIC Group to form Sinovant. In 2017, Ramaswamy struck a deal with Masayoshi Son in which SoftBank invested $1.1 billion in Roivant. In 2019, Roivant sold its stake in five subsidiaries (or "vants"), including Enzyvant, to Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma; Ramaswamy made $175 million in capital gains from the sale. The deal also gave Sumitomo Dainippon a 10% stake in Roivant.
While campaigning for the presidency, Ramaswamy called himself a "scientist" and said, "I developed a number of medicines."
In January 2021, Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO of Roivant Sciences and assumed the role of executive chairman. In 2021, after he resigned as CEO, Roivant was listed on the Nasdaq via a reverse merger with Montes Archimedes Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition vehicle. In February 2023, Ramaswamy stepped down as chair of Roivant to focus on his presidential campaign.
Ramaswamy remains the sixth-largest shareholder of Roivant, retaining a 7.17% stake. During Ramaswamy's time running Roivant the company had never been profitable.
Strive has branded itself as "anti-woke" and its funds as "anti-ESG"; Ramaswamy has claimed that the largest asset managers, such as BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, mix business with ESG politics to the detriment of their funds' investors.
Pension fund managers take account of ESG in the assessment of long-term risk, including , when making portfolio decisions. Ramaswamy has crusaded against ESG and emphasizes the doctrine of shareholder primacy, famously articulated by Milton Friedman. In his book Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam and elsewhere, he has depicted private corporations' socially conscious investing as simultaneously ineffective and the greatest threat to American society. He published a second book, Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence, in September 2022, a few months before announcing his presidential candidacy. (excerpt from Nation of Victims by Ramaswamy, republished in Politico Magazine).
Strive's flagship fund, the exchange-traded fund DRLL, launched in 2022 as an "anti-woke" energy sector index fund. Ramaswamy said that Strive would push energy companies to drill for more oil, Fracking for more natural gas, and "do whatever allows them to be most successful over the long run without regard to political, social, cultural or environmental agendas."
In October 2022, Ramaswamy held closed-door meetings with South Carolina lawmakers in a session arranged by state treasurer Curtis Loftis; during the meetings, Ramaswamy pitched Strive to manage South Carolina pension funds. In June 2023, after The Post and Courier reported on the meetings, the sessions were criticized as a form of unregistered lobbying; Ramaswamy's campaign manager denied any impropriety.
Ramaswamy was Strive's executive chairman before resigning in February 2023 to focus on his presidential campaign.
He was chairman of OnCore Biopharma, a position he maintained at Tekmira Pharmaceuticals when the two companies merged in March 2015. He also was chair of the board of Arbutus Biopharma, a Canadian firm.
In May 2024, Ramaswamy acquired a 7.7% stake in BuzzFeed, later increased to 8.4%, making him the second-largest Class A shareholder in the company. Soon after the acquisition, he sent a letter to the company's board of directors, in which he suggested they hire conservative pundits such as Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Bill Maher, as well as three "high-profile directors, with strong track business records in new media" whom he knew. Analysts have predicted that his direction could seriously shift BuzzFeed's content and editorial approach.
Ramaswamy has made political contributions to both Democrats and Republicans. In 2016, he donated $2,700 to the campaign of Dena Grayson, a Florida Democrat running for Congress. From 2020 to 2023, he donated $30,000 to the Ohio Republican Party. Ramaswamy considered running in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Ohio.
During his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Ramaswamy sought to appeal to evangelical Christian right and Christian nationalist voters, an important part of the Republican Base voter, some of whom are reluctant or unwilling to support a non-Christian presidential candidate such as Ramaswamy, who is Hindu. In campaign stops and interviews, Ramaswamy had criticized secularism, saying that the U.S. was founded on Christian values or Judeo-Christian values; that he shares those values; and that he believes in one God. While campaigning, Ramaswamy called himself an "unapologetic American nationalist"; he often attacked DeSantis but avoided directly criticizing Trump.
In May 2023, Ramaswamy's campaign admitted that he had paid an editor to alter his Wikipedia biography before announcing his candidacy, but denied that the payment for edits was politically motivated. The edits to the Wikipedia biography removed references to Ramaswamy's postgraduate fellowship from the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, as well as his involvement with the Ohio COVID-19 Response Team. Paul Soros and Daisy Soros are the elder brother and sister-in-law, respectively, of businessman and social activist George Soros, who has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories among American conservatives and rightists. Ramaswamy's campaign denied attempting to "scrub" his Wikipedia page and argued the edits were revisions of "factual distortions".
In January, after finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses, Ramaswamy ended his campaign and endorsed Trump. For the remainder of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Ramaswamy served the Trump campaign as a political surrogate, representing the Trump campaign and attending campaign events in place of the candidate.
According to political analysts, President Trump's early backing of Ramaswamy's candidature for Ohio governor is expected to immensely help his campaign and likely aimed to avoid a rough primary in Ohio. Ramaswamy also got support from President Trump's senior adviser Elon Musk, who posted on social platform X “Good luck, you have my full endorsement,” quoting Ramaswamy’s video announcing his run for Ohio governorship. On May 9, 2025, Ramaswamy received the official endorsement of the Ohio Republican Party's State Central Committee, marking the earliest the state Republican Party has ever endorsed a non-incumbent gubernatorial candidate.
He favored ending U.S. military aid to Ukraine, excluding Ukraine from NATO, and allowing Russia to remain in occupied regions of Ukraine in exchange for an agreement that Russia end its alliance with China.
After Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Ramaswamy said that in his view, "Israel should be able to make the decisions of how it defends itself" while suggesting that the U.S. should provide a "diplomatic Iron Dome" for Israel. Regarding the U.S. aid to Israel, he said that it should be contingent upon Israel's plans for defeating Hamas and its actions in Gaza Strip.
At other times, he said that he accepted that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, but called global climate change "not entirely bad"; said that "people should be proud to live a Carbon emissions lifestyle"; and said that the U.S. should "drill, Fracking, burn coal".
He criticized what he calls the "climate cult" and said that as president, he would "abandon the anticarbon framework as it exists" and halt "any mandate to measure carbon dioxide".
In 2022, he urged Chevron to increase oil production and criticized its support for a carbon tax. Ramaswamy's company holds a 0.02% stake in Chevron.
Ramaswamy opposed subsidies for electric vehicles. In his arguments, Ramaswamy used incorrect statistical claims about the history of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. His critics said that when he cited the upsides of climate change and fossil fuels, such as reduced cold-related deaths, cheap energy, and faster plant growth, he ignored larger downsides, such as increases in other weather-related disasters, deaths, and plant damage, and ignored that there are now less-polluting sources of cheap energy.
Invoking September 11 conspiracy theories, he asked whether "federal agents were on the planes" that hit the Twin Towers during the September 11 attacks.
He has asserted that "big tech" played a role in stealing the 2020 election, referring the Hunter Biden laptop story being suppressed by the mainstream media and social networks, while also claiming that the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory was "the Democratic Party's platform" to benefit from demographic shifts.
When asked about some of his past remarks, Ramaswamy frequently denied making the comments or claimed to have been misquoted, even when those denials were belied by recordings, transcripts, or extracts from his writing.
Ramaswamy is a monotheistic Hindu. According to relatives, he is fluent in Tamil language and understands (but does not speak) Malayalam. He is a vegetarianism and wrote in 2020, "I believe it is wrong to kill sentient animals for culinary pleasure." According to his parents, he has tried to develop a good understanding of both Eastern culture and Western culture.
In 2023, Ramaswamy's campaign mentioned his net worth to be around $1 billion. During his early venture capitalist career, he lived in Manhattan. As of 2021, he owned a house in Butler County, Ohio, but in 2023, the only real estate he reported owning was a house in Columbus, Ohio, in Franklin County. A 2023 Politico profile of Ramaswamy mentions him living in a $2 million estate in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.
Early life and education
Education
Business career
Early career
Roivant Sciences and subsidiaries
Roivant Social Ventures
Strive Asset Management
Other ventures
Political career
Early political involvement
2024 presidential campaign
Department of Government Efficiency
2026 Ohio gubernatorial election
Political positions
Anti-woke
Critical race theory
Abortion
LGBTQ and Gender ideology
Executive power
Voting rights
Border control
Taxes
Work visas
Foreign affairs
Russia-Ukraine
China-Taiwan
Israel-Palestine
Climate and energy
Promotion of conspiracy theories
Personal life
Published works
Notes
External links
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