'I'm One Of You' – How 'Anti-Woke' Warrior Vivek Ramaswamy Became A Billionaire At Only 38
Vivek Ramaswamy is a name making waves. Whether it's his stance against corporate "wokeness" or his ambitious political moves, people have started paying attention to him.
But behind all the headlines, Ramaswamy has an intriguing story: a child of Indian immigrants who turned his biotech gamble into a billion-dollar fortune – all by age 38.
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The American Dream
Born to Indian immigrant parents, Vivek Ramaswamy grew up with a strong work ethic. Forbes reports his dad worked as an engineer and patent attorney while his mom was a psychiatrist.
He didn't coast by in school – Ramaswamy graduated from Harvard with a biology degree and cofounded a startup that helped student founders pitch business ideas to investors. It wasn't a big moneymaker but gave him a taste of entrepreneurship.
After Harvard, Ramaswamy worked at QVT, a hedge fund specializing in pharmaceutical investments. By 28, he had become a partner, earning about $7 million.
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At 29, Ramaswamy took a big swing. He left his hedge fund job to found Roivant Sciences (NASDAQ:ROIV), an investment company focused on rescuing abandoned drugs. His bet? That some forgotten treatments could still be worth billions.
He was right. Just a year after founding Roivant, one of its subsidiaries, Axovant, went public with a valuation of $2.2 billion. Ramaswamy had bought the Alzheimer's drug that Axovant was based on for only $5 million. While that drug ultimately didn't work out, it didn't stop Ramaswamy from scoring big elsewhere.
However, as Forbes writes, in 2020, a Japanese pharmaceutical company bought several of Roivant’s drugs for $3 billion. That sale alone made Ramaswamy an instant multimillionaire. By then, he'd pulled in about $260 million in salary, bonuses and capital gains from Roivant. He invested his gains wisely, mostly in stocks and bonds and riskier bets like Bitcoin, ethereum and Rumble, a YouTube competitor.
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Fighting Wokeness
In 2021, Ramaswamy decided to switch gears. He stepped down as CEO of Roivant and focused on politics. He wrote a book called Woke, Inc., where he tore into corporate America’s focus on social justice and the environment.