Vivek Ramaswamy talks about reducing violence after Cincinnati brawl
Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy addressed the issue of crime at City Hall after a video of a large fight in downtown Cincinnati went viral.
- Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for Ohio governor, could become the state’s first billionaire governor.
- His net worth has more than doubled since he began his campaign, to more than $2 billion, thanks in large part to his stake in Roivant Sciences.
- Federal filings have revealed his vast wealth.
Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who secured the Republican nomination in May, is poised to become Ohio’s first billionaire governor if he wins a close race against Democrat Amy Acton.
Although the state’s financial disclosures provide a limited view of his net worth, recent federal regulatory filings show Ramaswamy is twice as wealthy as he was when he first declared his candidacy in early 2025, according to an investigation by the Cincinnati Enquirer, part of the USA TODAY Network. Records show that his total assets are currently worth more than $2 billion. Forbes magazine estimates that his worth may now be close to $3 billion.
There are many billionaire politicians in America, but Mr. Ramaswamy’s wealth is on a different order of magnitude. According to Forbes magazine, he will be the second richest governor of Illinois, behind Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Hyatt hotel scion whose net worth is estimated at more than $4 billion.
In an interview with the Enquirer, Ramaswamy emphasized that he was not “born into a wealthy family” and that his immigrant parents were middle-class residents of suburban Cincinnati. His father was an engineer for General Electric, and his mother was a geriatric psychiatrist who worked in a nursing home. His father attended night school and earned a law degree from Northern Kentucky University to increase job security during General Electric’s layoffs in the 1990s.
They sent young Vivek to a private boys’ school run by the Jesuits just west of Cincinnati, where Ramaswamy was valedictorian in 2003.
“I am so grateful to have lived the American dream from my humble upbringing to this day,” Ramaswamy said. “That’s one of my motivations for running.”
So how did the Cincinnati native (who now lives near Columbus) make so much money on investments, and how did he get rich in the first place?
Let’s take a closer look here.
Investment income is a big change for Ramaswami.
Mr. Ramaswamy’s only job now is running for office, and his only income comes from investments, according to state records from the Ohio Ethics Commission.
In Ohio, candidates must disclose their sources of income, including dividends from investments. You must also list all investments worth more than $1,000, but you do not need to disclose the size of those investments.
Ramaswamy’s disclosures revealed that he had $1.1 million in investment income in 2025. The bulk of that was a $769,000 capital gain from selling portions of stock in two publicly traded companies, McDonald’s and BlackBerry, both of which are listed as continuing investments. He also collected $342,000 in dividends from 25 investments.
This means that Ramaswamy’s dividend stock portfolio is worth more than $20 million. For example, Mr. Ramaswamy received $1,137 in dividends from Apple in 2025. The computer giant paid $1.04 per share last year. This indicates that the candidate owns approximately 1,100 shares of Apple stock, valued at more than $320,000 as of June 23.
But federal filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission signal a big change for Mr. Ramaswamy.
Biotech companies are Ramaswamy’s largest holdings
Mr. Ramaswamy founded Roivant Sciences after seven years at New York-based hedge fund QVT Investors, where he focused on the biotechnology industry.
Realizing that Big Pharma had more unapproved drugs than they could afford to turn into blockbusters, he founded Roivant to buy potential drugs that Big Pharma deemed less promising or low-priority. Roivant will purchase unapproved drugs at low prices and then proceed with clinical trials to develop new drugs.
Between 2015 and 2020, Ramaswamy sold more than $200 million in Roivant shares, but remains a major shareholder. He will step down as CEO of the company in 2021 and retire from the board of directors in 2023.
The company’s last proxy statement listed Mr. Ramaswamy as a “beneficial owner” with direct stock and options on more than 80 million Roivant shares, or more than 11% of Roivant’s outstanding stock.
Specifically, the proxy statement states that Mr. Ramaswamy directly owns more than 37 million shares and jointly owns an additional 13 million shares with his wife, Apoorva (valued at $1.2 billion and $400 million, respectively, based on the stock’s June 23 closing price). He also has an option to purchase more than 29.5 million additional shares, valued at approximately $460 million.
Ramaswamy’s Roivant shares are worth a total of $2.1 billion.
Mr. Ramaswamy said his business acumen makes him well qualified for the governorship.
“He understands how investors allocate capital, how CEOs make decisions, how to really lead as a CEO and how to bring good-paying jobs to the state,” he said. “I feel like I have the ability to do that, probably more than anyone else in this state.”
Early Roivant drugs lost investors’ money.
Roivant is a volatile company. Although the company posted a profit of $4.2 billion in 2024, it has been in the red every other year since going public in 2021.
In its most recent fiscal year, which ended March 31, Roivant had revenue of just $8 million and a loss of nearly $300 million. The company also disclosed that it has $4.3 billion in cash to support the business in its pursuit of profitability, a common “runway” number reported by venture companies such as biotech companies and startups.
Since its founding, Roivant has organized its drugs under development into a subsidiary company called Vantu, which allows it to be spun off as an independent business or sold. The huge 2024 gain came after the company sold its Telabant subsidiary, which was developing drugs to treat inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease.
An early venture, Axovant, was spun off in a 2015 initial public offering that generated a lot of buzz and brought in a lot of money for Roivant before it later crashed. The company is developing the Alzheimer’s disease drug intepirdine, and its stock price doubled on the first day of trading.
But two years later, Axovant revealed that the drug failed to help patients on late-stage drug tests. As a result, the company’s stock price plummeted, losing three-quarters of its value in one day. The company, later named Sio Gene Therapies, ceased operations in 2023 and liquidated its assets. Roivant maintained a 25% stake in the company until its demise.
But wait – there’s more!
After leaving his position as CEO of Roivant, Ramaswamy became more interested in politics. In 2021, he became a best-selling author with the publication of Woke, Inc., a book that criticizes American companies’ adoption of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. In 2023, he co-founded Strive Asset Management, an investment company that follows his “anti-woke” philosophy. He announced he would run for president in 2023, but withdrew from the Republican primary after finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses.
Mr. Ramaswamy is listed as a “beneficial owner” of Mr. Strive’s agent’s parent company, with 5.7 million shares owned by him and a trust in his name. The investment amount is equivalent to approximately $80 million.
What accounts for Mr. Ramaswamy’s recent surge in wealth?
The increase in Mr. Ramaswamy’s net worth is due to the surge in Roivant shares, which have more than tripled in value over the past year.
Shares have plummeted since last fall, when the company reported promising results in late-stage clinical trials of its drug brepocitinib, which is being tested as a treatment for an autoimmune disease called dermatomyositis, which causes skin lesions and muscle weakness.
Roivant also received a boost from a patent dispute settlement agreement disclosed in March in which Moderna agreed to pay Genevan Sciences (a subsidiary of Roivant) and another company up to $2.3 billion to end a patent infringement lawsuit.
Roivant said it expects to receive proceeds from the initial portion of the settlement of between $950 million and $770 million. As a result of this settlement, the company will increase its ongoing stock repurchase plan (to be announced in summer 2025) to $1 billion.
