Vivek Ramaswamy
Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy born August 9, 1985) is an American businessman and political candidate He founded Roivant Sciences, an American pharmaceutical company in 2014 In February 2023, Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination in the 2024 United States presidential election. Ramaswamy started his campaign claiming that the United States is in the middle of a national identity crisis precipitated by what he called “new secular religions like COVID-ism, climate-ism, and gender ideology”] He is also a critic of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives. In August 2023, Forbes estimated his net worth at more than $950 million; his wealth comes from biotech and financial businesses.
Education
Ramaswamy was born on August 9, 1985, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Hindu Tamil Brahmin immigrant parents. He was raised in Ohio. His family is from Kerala, India.[3][11][12] His father, V. Ganapathy Ramaswamy, a graduate of the National Institute of Technology Calicut, worked as an engineer and patent attorney for General Electric, while his mother, Geetha Ramaswamy, a graduate of the Mysore Medical College & Research Institute, worked as a geriatric psychiatrist.His parents immigrated from Palakkad district in Kerala, where the family had an ancestral home in a traditional agraharam in the town of Vadakkencherry
Growing up, Ramaswamy often attended the local Hindu temple in Dayton, Ohio, with his family .His conservative Christian 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.
Business 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.[27] The company was sold in 2009 to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
Ramaswamy worked at the hedge fund QVT Financial from 2007 to 2014 He was a partner and co-managed the firm’s biotech 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 both “brilliant” and a pathological liar, but criticized the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecuting him, calling Shkreli’s fraud a victimless crime.
Roivant Sciences and subsidiaries
Ramaswamy in 2017
In 2014, Ramaswamy founded the biotechnology firm Roivant Sciences; the “Roi” in the company’s name refers to return on investment.[31] The company was incorporated in Bermuda, a tax haven, and received almost $100 million in start-up capital from QVT and other investors,[31] including RA Capital Management, Visium Asset Management, and the hedge fund managers D. E. Shaw & Co. and Falcon Edge Capital.[28] Roivant’s strategy was to purchase patents from larger pharmaceutical companies for drugs that had not yet been successfully developed, and then bring them to the market.[31] The company created numerous subsidiaries, including Dermavant (which focused on dermatology), Urovant (which focused on urological disease), and China-based Sinovant and Cytovant, which focused on the Asian market.[33][37]
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.[30][38] In December 2014,[39] Axovant purchased the patent for intepirdine from GlaxoSmithKline (where the drug had failed four previous clinical trials) for $5 million, a small sum in the industry.[31] 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.”[31][38] Before new clinical trials began, he engineered an initial public offering in Axovant.[31] Axovant became a “Wall Street darling” and raised $315 million in its IPO.[39] 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.[31] Ramaswamy took a massive payout after selling a portion of his shares in Roivant to Viking Global Investors.[31] He claimed more than $37 million in capital gains in tax year 2015.[31] Ramaswamy said his company would be the “Berkshire Hathaway of drug development”[3] and touted the drug as a “tremendous” opportunity that “could help millions” of patients, prompting some criticism that he was overpromising.[31]
In September 2017, the company announced that intepirdine had failed in its large clinical trial.[31][40] The company’s value plunged; it lost 75% in one day and continued to decline afterward.[31] Shareholders who lost money included various institutional investors, such as the California State Teachers’ Retirement System pension fund.[31] Ramaswamy was insulated from much of Axovant’s losses because he held his stake through Roivant.[31][39] The company abandoned intepirdine. In 2018, Ramaswamy said he had no regrets about how the company handled the drug;[39] in subsequent years, he said he regretted the outcome but was annoyed by criticism of the company.[31] Axovant attempted to reinvent itself as a gene therapy company,[41] but dissolved in 2023.[31]
In 2017, Ramaswamy struck a deal with Masayoshi Son in which SoftBank invested $1.1 billion in Roivant.[31] In 2019, Roivant sold its stake in five subsidiaries (or “vants”), including Enzyvant, to Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma;[31][42] Ramaswamy made $175 million in capital gains from the sale.[31] The deal also gave Sumitomo Dainippon a 10% stake in Roivant.[42][43]
While campaigning for the presidency in 2023, Ramaswamy called himself a “scientist” and said, “I developed a number of medicines.”[31] Although his undergraduate degree is in biology, he was never a scientist; his role in the biotechnology industry was that of a financier and entrepreneur.[31]
In January 2021, Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO of Roivant Sciences and assumed the role of executive chairman.[42][43] 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.[44] In February 2023, Ramaswamy stepped down as chair of Roivant to focus on his presidential campaign.[31][45]
Ramaswamy remains the sixth-largest shareholder of Roivant,[31] retaining a 7.17% stake.[46] Roivant has never been profitable.
Presidential campaign (2023–present)
Early political involvement
Ramaswamy said that he voted for the Libertarian Party presidential nominee in 2004 but did not vote in the presidential elections in 2008, 2012, or 2016.[60] He described himself as “apolitical” during this period.[61] He supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election.[60][61]
In November 2021, he registered to vote in Franklin County, Ohio, as “unaffiliated“, but described himself as a Republican.[60] Ramaswamy has made political contributions to both Democrats and Republicans. From 2020 to 2023, he donated $30,000 to the Ohio Republican Party.[33] In 2016, he donated $2,700 to the campaign of Dena Grayson, a Florida Democrat running for Congress.[60]
Before running for president, Ramaswamy considered running in the 2022 election for U.S. Senate in Ohio