Vivek Ramaswamy

Vivek Ramaswamy is a completely unacceptable candidate for governor. He is currently the hand-picked choice of Ohio GOP Chairman Alex Triantafilou, who is trying to market him to voters as a successful, anti-establishment businessman. He presents himself as an outsider ready to shake up the system, but an examination of Vivek's factual record shows he is neither a true outsider nor a successful businessman: he is a globalist who gambles with other people's money.

In short:

• Vivek is not a biotech engineer; he is a successful hype man and gambler.
• Vivek's biotech businesses do not make medicine; they make him money.
• Vivek is not an outsider; he is a well-connected nepo-baby with two Ivy League degrees.
• Vivek is not anti-establishment; he has ties to Soros and the WEF.
• Vivek is not a small-government advocate; he developed national medical surveillance during COVID.
• Vivek claims he is "America First" but called Trump "downright abhorrent" and MAGA a "persecution complex."

Vivek the "Outsider"

Vivek hopes to convince you he is just another Ohio boy from a middle-class immigrant background who worked hard to get where he is today and is proud to be an American. In reality, he is a well-connected nepo-baby with two Ivy League degrees and ties to globalist organizations. In his mind, Ohio Governorship is resume padding for a future presidential run.

Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

In 2011, Vivek Ramaswamy accepted a grant from the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, a pro-immigrant and diversity-focused organization funded by the family of billionaire George Soros.¹ To this day, he appears on their website as a "Soros Fellow."² Vivek claims he needed the money to pay for his Ivy League education, but tax records show he was already a millionaire thanks to his job as a finance professional at the time he accepted the fellowship.³

When he launched his presidential campaign, he paid editors to remove information about his ties to Soros from his Wikipedia page. His campaign at the time denied this was a clean-up job, but later confessed they had paid for an editor to "clear up lies."⁴

The World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a globalist organization that promotes internationalism. It is best known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together political leaders, business executives, and academics to discuss global issues.

The WEF has named Vivek Ramaswamy a "Young Global Leader," a designation given to promising individuals under the age of 40 who are seen as future leaders in their fields. This association is so poisonous to Vivek that he has actually sued the WEF to remove his designation in 2023.⁵

Datavant and Medical Mass Surveillance

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Vivek was on the Ohio Economic Recovery Task Force working under Ohio Director of Health, Amy Acton, who is now the Democrat candidate for Ohio Governor.

While on the task force, Vivek's company Datavant pitched a plan to create a national database of American healthcare data that would be accessible to government agencies and private companies alike. This raised significant privacy concerns. The company proposed the creation of a universal patient database that could scale up "our surveillance and tracking data regarding COVID-19 testing and breakthrough infections."⁶

Vivek's idea was simple: All Americans would be digitally cattle tagged with a unique identifier ("tokenized") linking their medical records to a centralized database. This database would be accessible to government agencies and private companies alike. Those who had COVID-19 antibodies would be marked as "immune," while those who were not immune or refused to participate in the system would not be allowed to go outside and do normal activities.

The goal was ambitious and far-reaching: to cover 80% of all U.S. medical claims, encompassing private insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare.⁷ For a candidate who speaks of limited government, this proposal represents a startling embrace of a centralized, government-accessible dossier on the private health of millions of Americans.

On April 22nd, 2020, Datavant (a subsidiary of Roivant, Vivek's company) announced in a press release that a consortium of healthcare companies (which included Datavant) had launched a COVID-19 research database. In 2021, in a $7 billion deal, it merged with Coix Health to become the "nation's largest neutral and secure health data ecosystem."^{8 9}

This is where Vivek's real wealth comes from: buying and selling American medical data. Datavant, thereby Roivant and Vivek, profited massively off the indirect value of Datavant's "tokenization" system being made part of the national surveillance database he pioneered.

He was simultaneously a key figure at Datavant while being a member of Ohio's COVID-19 response team, but now condemns Amy Acton for her COVID-19 response, despite literally sitting next to her on the task force. If this is what he's willing to do with limited power and privilege during a crisis, imagine what he'll do as Governor of Ohio.

-vant

You may have noticed all of Vivek's companies have "vant" in the name. This suffix in Sanskrit (an Indian language) means "possessor of."¹⁰ So Datavant means "possessor of Data" (your medical data, specifically).

This naming convention is common in Indian Hindu royalty, who chose names like "Balvant" (Possessor of Strength). Perhaps Vivek intends to change his name to Ohiovant: Possessor of Ohio.

Vivek the "Biotech Entrepreneur"

Meritocracy

Vivek Ramaswamy likes to talk about bringing America back to a society of merit, where immigrant families like his can come over by the tens of millions so long as they meet certain academic or financial standards.

However, in his own companies, he practices a different standard with much more nepotism. Axovant placed his immediate family members in high-level executive roles. According to a company filing, both his mother and brother were vice presidents.¹¹

• Geetha Ramaswamy, his mother, served as the Vice President of Medical Affairs.
• Shankar Ramaswamy, his brother, served as the Vice President of Corporate Development.

This might be acceptable if Geetha and Shankar were the best people for the job, but their roles in Axovant Sciences do not point towards the best candidates to make medicine, but rather the best candidates to help pull off a heist.

"Anti-Woke" Vivek may have a different understanding of what "merit" means from the rest of us. As President of Roivant Sciences Ltd., Ramaswamy oversaw the foundation of the Roivant Foundation in 2020 (now Roivant Social Ventures), which openly promoted DEI initiatives.¹² RSV partnered to improve "health equity," took an interest in "building DEI opportunities ... in biotech," and its CEO wrote in 2022 that "the lack of diversity in the drug industry ... is hurting women and people of color."¹³

His Ohio nomination is also anti-merit. In 2025, the Ohio GOP took the very unusual step of backing him as their official nominee for governor a full year before the primaries took place (still set for May 2026).¹⁴ For most candidates, there was no reason to run if the party was not going to support them or hold a fair primary. Lt. Governor Jon Husted and Attorney General Dave Yost were effectively shut out of the race by the party's early endorsement of Ramaswamy.

Coincidentally, the Chairman of the Ohio GOP, Alex Triantafilou, is a family friend who has known Vivek since he was a teenager.¹⁵ Very merit-based, Alex.

Innovation vs. Hype

Ramaswamy’s reputation as a "biotech entrepreneur" suggests a background in inventing groundbreaking medicine. He proudly boasts on stage, whenever given the chance, that he saves lives with his creations. However, an examination of his company's SEC filings reveals a different business model: His companies, such as Axovant Sciences, are not in the business of inventing new drugs from scratch.^{16 11}

Axovant's parent company Roivant Sciences Ltd. (RSL), entered into an agreement to acquire the global rights to the drug 'nelotanserin' from another company. His business model is acquiring the rights to drugs developed by others and getting them approved by the FDA.¹⁷ Ramaswamy acts less as a medical innovator and more as a financial deal-maker and lawyer, focused on buying and selling existing pharmaceutical assets and getting them through FDA trials.

This could be a good thing, but Vivek's dealings are not so simple. Vivek's primary revenue generation comes from starting businesses with his family, hyping up products, and then passing the company off to other people without realizing long-term results.¹⁸ Fortune reviewed his businesses in 2023 and found that despite talking big about his endless financial resources, it is unclear if any of his businesses actually make money before being sold, sometimes at the expense of his investors.¹⁹

The company Vivek works with actually developing the drugs has a familiar name: Pfizer. Sometimes, a giant company decides a new drug isn't worth finishing, even if it might work. That’s where Ramaswamy steps in. He buys these "leftover" drugs and tests them in a new company, like Telavant, that Pfizer still owns a piece of.²⁰ It’s a gamble with other people's money. If the drug fails, Vivek just loses cash from his investors. But if it succeeds, he sells it back to another big company for a fortune. In 2023, he did exactly this: he took a drug Pfizer didn't want, "flipped" it, and sold it to Roche for $7.1 billion.²¹

Vivek's skills are not in inventing medicine. It is convincing investors to let him gamble with their money, like how he wants to convince Ohio to let him gamble with their state.

The Axovant Sciences Scam

Axovant Sciences was a company started by Vivek Ramaswamy to develop and sell an Alzheimer’s drug called intepirdine. Ramaswamy bought the drug for $5 million from a much larger company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), after it had already failed four clinical trials.²² To get people to invest, he used massive media hype to convince the public that the drug was a "tremendous" opportunity. To verify the drug's success, he hired his mother, Dr. Geetha Ramaswamy, as Vice President of Medical Affairs and his brother, Shankar, as a Vice President.¹¹ A tiny team including his mother conducted a new trial that conveniently showed the drug worked, despite its long history of failure. The pharmaceuticals industry looked on skeptically but admitted that Ramaswamy had pulled off an impressive feat of marketing.²³

Based on these "successful" results, Axovant launched its Initial Public Offering (IPO), which is when a company sells its first shares of stock to the public to raise money.²⁴ This 2015 IPO was a record-breaker, raising $315 million and valuing the company at nearly $3 billion.²⁵ During this time, Ramaswamy’s mother and brother were given stock options at a very low price of $0.90 per share, allowing the family to gain massive wealth on paper.²⁶

However, the drug's actual testing ended in a disaster called the Phase 3 MINDSET trial. In 2017, the trial proved that intepirdine did not help patients with their memory or daily tasks any better than a placebo (a fake pill). When the results were announced, Axovant’s stock price crashed by more than 70% in a single day. While regular "mom-and-pop" investors lost their life savings in the crash, Ramaswamy and his family walked away with millions of dollars.^{27 28}

• Vivek Ramaswamy sold $37 million worth of his shares in Axovant's parent company before the crash.²⁹
• Geetha and Shankar Ramaswamy were each paid $444,000 and $447,000 (respectively) in cash compensation as salary and bonuses.³⁰
• The Ramaswamy family members were also each offered stock options for $389,000 at $0.90 a share. They ended up leaving the company's "Section 16" positions in mid-2017 or early 2018, which still would have allowed millions in profits with no reporting requirement.³¹

After their departure, Axovant attempted to rebrand as "Sio Gene Therapies" to escape the failure of the intepirdine trials, but dissolved in 2023 at $0.435 a share.³²

Vivek does not like people knowing about this, so he threatens to sue those talking about it. In particular, he pretends that the claim he sold Axovant stock is false. It is false only because Axovant was a subsidiary of Roivant, a company he does own, and which he sold part of to Viking Global Investors after Axovant's IPO.²⁹

Vivek's business model is high-stakes, hundred-million-dollar gambling. What makes him a successful businessman is that he manages to convince other people to let him play with their money. As Governor, he would be gambling with Ohioans' money and futures.

Based in Bermuda, Not Ohio

This focus on financial engineering over medical innovation is further reflected in the company's very structure. For voters who prioritize "America First" principles, the corporate structure of Ramaswamy’s primary business venture may be a point of concern. Axovant Sciences Ltd. was not an American company. SEC filings list its official corporate addresses as:

• Clarendon House, 2 Church Street, Hamilton HM 11, Bermuda
• Suite 1, 3rd Floor, 11-12 St. James’s Square, London, SW1Y 4LB, United Kingdom

The company's own SEC filings confirm it was governed not by the laws of Ohio or any U.S. state, but by the "Bermuda Companies Act 1981," establishing it firmly as an offshore entity rather than a U.S.-based business.

So while Vivek claims to be a proud Ohio native, his corporate structure exists to ensure his family's profits are maximized through offshore tax strategies rather than reinvested in American workers and innovation.

Vivek the Chameleon

Vivek Ramaswamy is a slimy politician who will say whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear. His stances on everything change depending on his current circumstances and audience. He has flip-flopped the hardest on climate change, Donald Trump, and the MAGA movement.

The DOGE Defection

Vivek’s commitment to "efficiency" apparently does not extend to finishing the job. In late 2024, Ramaswamy accepted a high-profile appointment to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Elon Musk, promising a "Manhattan Project" to dismantle federal bureaucracy by July 2026. Instead, he treated the critical federal reform initiative as a temporary internship, abandoning the post after less than three months the moment the Ohio Governor's race opened up.³³

His abrupt resignation in early 2025 exposed the reality of his "America First" rhetoric: Vivek has no interest in the hard work of governance, only in the spotlight it provides. It is not surprising that the one time Vivek could have proved his merit in running a governmental organization, he instead quickly abandoned it in favor of grabbing the "low hanging fruit" he sees Ohio as. He left Washington not with a legacy of cost-cutting, but with a padded resume, proving that for Ramaswamy, public service is merely a stepping stone for personal advancement.

Climate Change

Vivek's official position on climate change is bad regardless of your political affiliation.

Ramaswamy simultaneously claims climate change is a real, man-made phenomenon caused by burning fossil fuels, but also a good thing. He has outright stated that it would be better if the planet got warmer and that Americans should be proud to live a "high carbon lifestyle." When asked if anything should be done to stop climate change, his answer was a blunt "no."³⁴

"I'm not denying the underlying reality that surface temperatures are going up, and in part due to human activity, but what I am denying here and rejecting, is the religious fanaticism to say that needs to be the end all, be all purpose of human action, when in fact the end all, be all purpose of human action should actually be human flourishing itself.³⁵"

"Eight times as many people die of cold temperatures as die of warm ones. The right answer to all temperature-related deaths is more plentiful, abundant access to fossil fuels."³⁶

He also made the expression "drill, frack, burn coal" a recurring campaign slogan in his 2024 presidential run, despite apparently believing that doing so is causing catastrophic damage to the planet. The reality of whether the Earth is actually boiling over or if fossil fuels are good or bad is irrelevant to Vivek; he will say whatever he thinks will get him what he wants.

This contradiction only makes sense when you know Vivek is representing himself as a MAGA candidate despite his globalist ties. His stance on climate must accommodate both "man-made catastrophe" when talking to the Soros family or WEF, and a "climate activist cult" when talking to Ohio voters.

Trump is "downright abhorrent"

In 2021, Ramaswamy openly criticized Donald Trump for his actions on January 6th. He called Trump's behavior "downright abhorrent" and condemned the former president who would one day endorse him for governor.³⁷

In 2022, Ramaswamy published a book called "Nation of Victims", trashing Trump for having sold MAGA a "tale of grievance" and a "persecution complex" that "swallowed much of the Republican party whole."³⁸

In the years where Vivek made these statements and published his book, Trump had seemingly lost his political power forever. At the same time, Vivek was trying to sell Datavant services to the Biden administration to federally monitor all Americans and their vaccination status.

In 2026, now that he needs the MAGA base, he suddenly claims Trump was the "best president of the 21st century."³⁹

Lazy Americans

On December 24th, 2024, when most Americans were celebrating Christmas Eve with their families, Vivek Ramaswamy took to X to deliver a scathing critique of American culture.⁴⁰ In a lengthy post, he argued that American society has "venerated mediocrity over excellence", blaming America's decline on the work ethic of its citizens.

In his eyes, his first-generation immigrant family is simply better than the Ohioans who have lived here for generations. He believes that because he doesn't watch Friends and has a lot of money, he has earned the right to buy the American dream out from under its true inheritors: our children.

The message below is not edited and is his statement in full. This is how he really thinks about you.

The Trump Endorsement

If Vivek is so bad, why did Trump endorse him?

1. The "Clear the Field" Deal
The Ohio GOP Establishment was terrified that Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel would run for Governor, because he would win, and potentially be just another term of Mike DeWine. The party leadership rushed to unite behind Ramaswamy early to force Tressel out of the race. Trump’s endorsement was likely part of that deal, and a strategic move to clear the field, not a vetting of Vivek's record.

2. Trump Has Been Wrong Before
Trump relies on consultants who sometimes give him bad information. It has happened before.

• Mitt Romney (2018): Trump endorsed Mitt Romney who ended up voting to impeach him.
• Mike DeWine (2022): Speaking of Mike DeWine, he was also personally endorsed by Trump in his 2022. Ask any MAGA voter in Ohio how they feel about DeWine and his handling of the COVID-19 lockdowns.
• Dr. Oz (2022): Trump endorsed Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania despite Oz's liberal history. The base stayed home, and that important senate seat was lost to John Fetterman.

Trump may lead the party, but the voters have to live with the Governor. When consultants are giving him names and billionaires are running fast and loose with their ego, mistakes happen.