Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamyis an American entrepreneur and politician. He is a candidate in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries.
Ramaswamy founded the biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences in 2014, after working as an investment partner. Since 2020, he has written and spoken out against stakeholder capitalism, Big Tech censorship, and critical race theory. After leaving Roivant in 2021, he co-founded and is the executive chairman of Strive Asset Management, an investment firm opposed to the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) framework.
Business career
In 2007, Ramaswamy and Travis May co-founded Campus Venture Network, a technology company that provided software and networking resources to university entrepreneurs. The company was acquired in 2009 by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. From 2007 to 2014, Ramaswamy worked at QVT Financial, where he was a partner and co-managed the firm's biotech portfolio while simultaneously attending Yale Law School from 2010 to 2013. Ramaswamy served on the Ohio COVID-19 Response Team.
Roivant Sciences
In 2014, Ramaswamy founded the pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences, which focuses on applying technology to drug development, serving as CEO until 2021. He appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine in 2015 for his work in drug development. The story was about Ramaswamy raising $360 million for the Roivant subsidiary Axovant Sciences in an attempt to save an Alzheimer's drug that had failed at GlaxoSmith Kline. In 2017, the drug also failed at Axovant. Axovant had a market value of $276 million as of June 2018.
In 2020, Ramaswamy co-founded Chapter Medicare, a Medicare navigation platform.
In early 2021, Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO of Roivant Sciences.
Strive Asset Management
Ramaswamy is the co-founder and executive chairman of Strive Asset Management, an Ohio-based asset management firm backed financially by Peter Thiel and J. D. Vance, among others. Strive was established to offer an alternative to larger asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, which Ramaswamy criticized for engaging in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activities, and mixing business with politics to the alleged detriment of shareholders.
Strive's total assets under management surpassed $500 million on November 11, 2022, three months after its first fund launched. In January 2023, Strive launched a proxy advisory service to compete with such mainstream firms as Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services. Axios and Bloomberg have called Ramaswamy "the leading anti-ESG crusader."
