A company co-founded and owned by Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate and biotechnology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy moved its operations from Ohio to Texas in 2024. Ramaswamy has said he was by then only a shareholder in the company and was not involved in the decision to move the company, but public filings indicate that he owned a controlling stake in the company at the time.
Ramaswamy will face Democratic former Ohio Department of Health director Dr. Amy Acton in the Nov. 3 election.
In 2022, Ramaswamy and Anson Frericks launched Strive Enterprises, which called itself “a financial services firm with a mission to maximize value for clients through unapologetic capitalism.” Ramaswamy served as chairman of the company until February 2023, when he announced he would seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
In November 2024, Strive announced it would relocate its corporate headquarters and most of its Columbus-based staff to Dallas by the end of March 2025 as part of a merger agreement with another company. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said in the company’s press release announcing the move, “I welcome Strive to our great state and look forward to working with them to create more jobs, spur innovation, and bring new investments to Dallas and the entire state of Texas.”
In the same press release, co-founder Ramaswamy is quoted as saying, “I wish the team great success in the next stage of Strive’s incredible journey.”
Four months later, Ramaswamy announced his candidacy for Ohio governor. In a July 2025 interview on the Better Bad Ideas podcast, host and Teamsters president Sean O’Brien asked him about the decision to move his company out of Ohio.
Ramaswamy responded that he was not involved with the decision and that it was a motivation for his gubernatorial campaign: “There’s a new CEO who actually I recruited from California, moved to Ohio, including his family, and he’s the CEO of the company. Two years later, it then comes up, right, or a full almost two years later, that he’s doing a deal with a company in Texas. And the question between the two CEOs is, where did they set it up?
“I’m not on the board,” he continued. “I’m just a shareholder of the company at this point. He makes a decision independently, and I’m not mad at him for it. I think it’s — he got to make an objective decision for the business. Turns out the business environment in Texas is way more favorable than the business environment in Florida — than in Ohio — for that type of company.”
Ramaswamy said he wants to get rid of what he called unnecessary climate and hiring regulations, “DEI, all of that stuff,” to attract companies back to Ohio.
Although Ramaswamy said he was “just a shareholder,” an August 2025 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission noted that he owned most of the company: “As a result of the Transactions, Vivek Ramaswamy, together with an affiliated trust managed by a third-party trustee and investment advisor, are the sole beneficial owners of Strive’s Class A Voting Common Stock prior to completion of the Merger, and are expected to become the largest holders of voting power of New Strive.”
A Ramaswamy campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
