Vivek Ramaswamy
Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy (/vɪˈveɪk rɑːməˈswɑːmiː/;[1][2] vih-VAYK rah-mə-SWAH-mee; born August 9, 1985) is an American entrepreneur and politician. He founded Roivant Sciences, a pharmaceutical company, in 2014. In February 2023, Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination in the 2024 United States presidential election. He suspended his campaign in January 2024, after finishing fourth in Iowa's caucuses.[3]
Vivek Ramaswamy
- Businessman
- author
- political candidate
Co-founder of Strive Asset Management
2
Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati to Indian immigrant parents. He graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in biology and later earned a law degree from Yale Law School. Ramaswamy worked as an investment partner at a hedge fund before founding Roivant Sciences. He also co-founded an investment firm, Strive Asset Management.
Ramaswamy claims the United States is in the middle of a national identity crisis precipitated by what he calls "new secular religions like COVID-ism, climate-ism, and gender ideology".[4] He is also a critic of environmental, social, and corporate governance initiatives (ESG).[5] In January 2024, Forbes estimated Ramaswamy's net worth at more than $960 million; his wealth comes from biotech and financial businesses.[6][7]
Career
Early career
In 2007, Ramaswamy and Travis May co-founded Campus Venture Network, which published a private social networking website for university students who aspired to launch a business.[34] The company was sold to the nonprofit Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in 2009.[35]
Ramaswamy worked at the hedge fund QVT Financial from 2007 to 2014.[8][36][37][38] He was a partner and co-managed the firm's biotech portfolio.[36][37][35] QVT's biotech investments under Ramaswamy included stakes in Palatin Technologies,[35] Concert Pharmaceuticals,[35] Pharmasset,[39][40] and Martin Shkreli's Retrophin.[41] 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.[41]
Personal life
Ramaswamy's wife, Apoorva Tewari Ramaswamy, is a laryngologist and surgeon; they met at Yale, when he was studying law and she was studying medicine.[8][139] They married in 2015 and have two sons.[8] Ramaswamy has a younger brother, Shankar,[8] who worked for him at Axovant and later co-founded Kriya Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company.[140]
Ramaswamy is a monotheistic Hindu.[21] According to relatives, he is fluent in Tamil[141][142] and understands (but does not speak) Malayalam.[142] He is a vegetarian and wrote in 2020, "I believe it is wrong to kill sentient animals for culinary pleasure".[27][71][143] According to his parents, he has tried to develop a good understanding of both eastern and western culture and traditions.[141][71]
In 2023, Ramaswamy's campaign advisor said his net worth was more than $1 billion;[144] Forbes estimated it at more than $950 million.[53] He lived in Manhattan as of 2016.[145] As of 2021, he owned a house in Butler County, Ohio,[20] but in 2023, the only real estate he reported owning was a house in Columbus, Ohio, in Franklin County.[144] A 2023 Politico profile of Ramaswamy mentions him living in a $2 million estate in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.[146]