Vivek Ramaswamy, a Wealthy Anti-Woke Activist, Left Corporate America for Politics

In January 2021, after racking up a multimillion-dollar net worth, Vivek Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO of his biotech company, Roivant Sciences, and wrote a book called Woke, Inc.

Why? He’s concerned with “woke” politics in corporate boardrooms and hoping to do with the “Church of Wokeism” what The Boston Globe’s investigative Spotlight team did to the Catholic Church, as he told The Wall Street Journal.

“I’m a whistleblower, not a journalist,” he added. “But the church analogy holds strong … In the case of my book, the child I’m concerned about is American democracy.” In Ramaswamy’s view, wokeism was a “lifeline” for big banks. “A bunch of big banks got together with a bunch of millennials, birthed woke capitalism, and then put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption,” he explained. “And now 'big business' makes money by critiquing itself.”

So, who is Vivek Ramaswamy and what's his net worth?

As The Wall Street Journal reported, Ramaswamy grew up in suburban Ohio, honing his belief system as the only Hindu student at the Catholic school to which his parents transferred him after he was attacked by an “anti-achiever” classmate in public school. Though raised by a liberal father, Ramaswamy identified as a libertarian during high school and as a conservative while he was a biology student at Harvard University.

After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard and becoming a biotech investor, Ramaswamy attended Yale Law with a fellowship from Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.

In 2014, Ramaswamy founded Roivant, and in 2015, he was behind the biggest-ever U.S. biotech IPO when Roivant’s Axovant Sciences raised $360 million, according to Forbes. The following year, Roivant’s Myovant Sciences raised $218 million in its IPO. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Ramaswamy has a net worth of $500 million.

Ramaswamy stepped down as Roivant's CEO in January 2021 and became the company’s executive chairman, telling shareholders that his “increasing public engagement” influenced his decision, reported BioSpace. Now, he has a book out, Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, billed as a critique against “stakeholder capitalism” and the mixing of morality and consumerism.

In the book, Ramaswamy accuses companies like Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines of capitalizing on popular social justice movements, according to the Daily Mail. “Here’s how it works: pretend like you care about something other than profit and power, precisely to gain more of each,” he writes.

In this scenario, Ramaswamy adds, “Corporations win. Woke activists win. Celebrities win. But the losers of this game are the American people, including both sincere progressives who are used as pawns and everyday conservatives who are silenced, our hollowed-out institutions, and American democracy itself.”

His solution? A “shared American identity that is so deep and so powerful that it dilutes wokeism to irrelevance … one that no longer leaves us susceptible to being divided by corporate elites for their own gain.”

After releasing his best-selling book Woke, Inc., Ramaswamy penned Capitalist Punishment, which made its debut online and in stores on April 25, 2023.

To show how committed he is to standing up against politicizing corporate America, Ramaswamy announced via Twitter that all of the proceeds he collects from book sales will be donated to Color Us United, a nonprofit that has taken legal action against American Express for “discrimination on the basis of race as part of its racial equity agenda.”

To further push his agenda, Ramaswamy appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight and CNN This Morning to discuss the issues he believes need addressing. It's believed his April 2023 appearance on CNN This Morning played a role in Don Lemon being fired. The heated argument the two engaged in over the civil rights movement and the Second Amendment left CNN executes "exasperated."

In February 2023, Ramaswamy released a four-minute video online announcing his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. The anti-woke activist believes “this isn’t just a political campaign” but “a cultural movement to create a new American dream for the next generation.”

Ramaswamy is looking to complement changes so that people “get ahead in this country not on the color of [their] skin but on the content of [their] character and [their] contributions.” The Republican says it's time for “the people who you elect to run the government [to] actually run [it].”

Ramaswamy is running against Joe Biden, Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, Asa Hutchinson, Marianne Williamson, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.