By the ripe old age of 28, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy had already earned an impressive $7 million while working at a hedge fund company. Then, at 29 years old, he opted to strike out on his own with the creation of Roivant Sciences and, eventually, its subsidiary Axovant Sciences. The name of the game? Investing in various pharmaceutical drugs, namely those largely forgotten by other pharmaceutical behemoths. “It’s an ethical problem of an underappreciated magnitude,” Ramaswamy told Forbes. “So many drugs that would have been of use to society are cast aside. Certain drugs have gone by the wayside for reasons that have nothing to do with their underlying merits.” Case in point: Intepirdine, an Alzheimer’s drug that Ramaswamy acquired from GlaxoSmithKline for a meager $5 million. Six months later, in June 2015, he took Axovant Sciences public, and the company’s value skyrocketed to a staggering $3 billion. Ramaswamy boasted to CNBC that the drug could “help millions of people.” He added, “The potential opportunity is really tremendous for delivering value to patients.”
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Sadly, Intepirdine would ultimately fail during clinical trials. By September of the same year, the company’s shares had severely plummeted and were down a hefty amount from the initial public offering price. Then, in January 2021, Ramaswamy announced in a letter to shareholders that he would be stepping down from his role as chief executive of Axovant. But not before walking away with a boatload of cash from his time with the company. Still, he wasn’t done yet.
