Vivek Ramaswamy is a billionaire pharmaceutical businessman who has declared his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination in the next United States presidential election in 2024. The Republic of GOP candidate is the founder of the company named Roivant Sciences, which has made multiple billion-dollar deals for the future of medicine since it's commencement in 2014.
As per Forbes, Vivek Ramaswamy is worth over $960 million as of August 21, 2023. It was more than one billion a week ago but the market went down and he lost his title of being one of the 20 youngest billionaires in the United States.
On Monday, the candidate talked about uniting a nation at a restaurant in New Hampshire. As per the outlet, he said:
"Democrats and Republicans alike, we tend to be more proud of a country when we’re all making more money in that country. We don’t have to flog ourselves for capitalism. Stop apologizing for capitalism. We should embrace capitalism."
Vivek Ramaswamy's deals and investments in the pharmaceutical industry and beyond
The presidential candidate's drug development company, Roivant Sciences, went public two years ago in 2021, as per STAT News. The stock of Roivant went up by 40% this year and led to Vivek's 10% stake in the company amounting to about $600 million.
Vivek has bought out about $260 million of the money in the form of salary, bonuses, and capital gains to invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum. He has some shares in Rumble and a significant stake in MoonPay, a payment firm for cryptocurrency, as per Forbes.
He stepped down from his CEO position at Roivant Sciences in February and announced his White House bid, as per New York Post.
Vivek Ramaswamy was born on August 9, 1985, to Indian Immigrant parents. His father worked as an engineer and patent lawyer and his mother was a psychiatrist.
It is unknown if they still practice their professions. He received his education at Harvard where he studied Biology and founded a company called Student Businesses.com
Vivek also has a law degree from Yale and made over $7 million at the age of 28, seven years after he started his career at a hedge fund called QVT.
According to the New York Times, Roivant Sciences has brought five drugs to market since it was founded in 2014 by Vivek Ramaswamy.
The treatments that Roivant's medicine provides with its drugs are for uterine fibroids, prostate cancer, and rare genetic conditions. He mentioned the rare cases at a gathering in Davenport Iowa in June, where he said:
"I developed a number of medicines. The one I’m most proud of is a therapy for kids, 40 of them a year, born with a genetic condition who, without treatment, die by the age of 3."
As per New York Post, Roivant Sciences is in the talking process of selling an experimental drug called RVT-3101 which can treat debilitating stomach diseases like Chron’s and ulcerative colitis to Roche.
The pharmaceutical company from Switzerland can potentially buy the rights for the product for over seven billion dollars.
Vivek's comments on the first GOP debate
Vivek Ramaswamy participated in the Republican debate held on August 24, 2023, and gave his opinion on many controversial subjects. He talked about climate change, saying:
"The climate change agenda is a hoax… and the reality is the anti-carbon agenda is the wet blanket on our economy."
Ramaswamy also said that Donald Trump was the greatest President of his lifetime and urged the governement to stop funding Ukraine with taxpayer dollars.