Vivek Ramaswamy Data Centers & AICorruption & Ethics Ohio

Vivek Ramaswamy Would Appoint the Boards That Give Ohio's Data Centers Their Tax Breaks. He Owns NVIDIA, Microsoft and Amazon Stock and Hasn't Said Whether He'd Sell It.

Ramaswamy's own Ohio ethics filing lists stock in the companies that make the chips, run the servers and own the land behind the data center boom. As governor he'd appoint the boards that hand out their tax breaks and approve their power plants. Asked whether he'd sell, he didn't answer.

MAGA Report Cards ·
Share: X Facebook Bluesky Reddit Email
Vivek Ramaswamy Would Appoint the Boards That Give Ohio's Data Centers Their Tax Breaks. He Owns NVIDIA, Microsoft and Amazon Stock and Hasn't Said Whether He'd Sell It.

Vivek Ramaswamy wants to be the governor who decides how Ohio's data center boom goes: which projects get tax breaks, where their power plants go, and who pays for the new power lines. He also owns stock in the companies that make money when that boom keeps going.

Last week, News 5 Cleveland asked both candidates for governor whether they would sell their data-center-related holdings if elected. Ramaswamy did not answer. On Tuesday, his Democratic opponent Amy Acton challenged him to sell his individual stocks and commit to not investing in data centers. As of that report, Ramaswamy had not committed to selling anything.

What his own filing shows

In April, Ramaswamy filed his financial disclosure with the Ohio Ethics Commission, covering 2025. He signed it under a warning that a false statement is a crime. Here is what it lists that touches the data center business:

  • The chips. NVIDIA stock, which pays him dividends. NVIDIA makes the processors that AI data centers are built around.
  • A chip fund he helped create. The Strive U.S. Semiconductor ETF, a fund from Strive, the investment company Ramaswamy founded.
  • The companies that run the servers. Stock in Microsoft, Amazon and Apple. Microsoft alone paid him $20,230 in dividends in 2025, according to the filing.
  • The land. Stock in Prologis, the warehouse real estate giant. The filing also lists 2025 dividends from three more industrial real estate companies (Plymouth Industrial REIT, Rexford Industrial Realty and Terreno Realty) and income from the NYLI CBRE Global Infrastructure Megatrends Term Fund, which Innovation Ohio says targets digital infrastructure, including data centers.
  • The crypto. Bitcoin and Ethereum in a Coinbase wallet, plus stock in Strive, Inc., the company he founded that bet heavily on Bitcoin. Bitcoin mining runs on the same power-hungry computer warehouses.

Ohio's form doesn't ask what investments are worth, so the filing doesn't show how much each stake is worth. It does show where his money is.

The progressive group Innovation Ohio went through the same filing in May and published a report arguing that his holdings reach "every link" in the data center supply chain. That's their characterization. The list above comes from the filing itself.

To be fair about the scale: none of this is a direct ownership stake in a particular Ohio data center project. TiffinOhio.net pointed out that Acton's line that he "personally invested millions of dollars in data centers" goes further than the filing shows. What the filing does show is a governor-to-be holding shares in the companies that come out ahead when Ohio says yes to more data centers.

What a governor controls

This is why the stock matters. Ohio law says the governor appoints all nine members of the JobsOhio board. JobsOhio is the private development group that puts together incentive packages for companies moving into the state.

The governor also appoints the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which sets the rules for utilities and has already adopted special rules for giant data center power loads, TiffinOhio.net reported. The governor's appointees also sit on the Ohio Power Siting Board, which approves where new power plants go, and the Tax Credit Authority, which approves tax breaks.

Those tax breaks are big. Data centers in Ohio received $2.5 billion in state and local tax incentives between 2017 and 2024, according to an industry-backed report. Several companies in his portfolio make the chips for those facilities or run them.

He called the boom "good" over and over

Ramaswamy didn't come to this issue as a skeptic. In March 2025 he posted that Ohio was "seeing an AI data center boom (which is good)." Two days later he posted again: "The AI data center boom is good for our region."

TiffinOhio.net counted at least 10 recorded appearances and posts between March 27 and April 26, 2025 where he called the boom good or great. At a Republican dinner in Wintersville that March, he talked about AI data centers and Bitcoin mining firms, "all of which I want in the state." His answer to the strain on the power grid was not to slow the facilities down. It was to build more power to keep up with them.

Now he's promising a pause

Opposition to data centers spread across Ohio, much of it in the rural, conservative parts of the state that make up much of his political base. Ramaswamy's position shifted with it. His plan, announced in August, would stop new data centers from coming to the state until companies pay the electric bills of the communities they're in, News 5 reported. We've written about how that plan's promise of free electricity runs through regulators the governor appoints, and the $97,468 energy PACs gave him this year.

A pause that ends once lawmakers write the rules is still a plan for more data centers. Projects that meet his conditions would still move forward. And the person deciding whether those conditions are met would be a governor who owns the chip, cloud and real estate stocks that gain when they are.

Acton's own filing isn't spotless either

Acton's pledge doesn't make her filing clean, and we won't pretend it does. News 5 Cleveland reported that her financial report shows a couple of technology holdings like Microsoft, and stock in Iron Mountain, which runs a small data center near Dayton. After the story aired, her campaign said she doesn't own individual stocks and wouldn't hold any as governor. The difference is that she has made that promise. Ramaswamy hasn't.

The bottom line

Vivek Ramaswamy's own 2025 Ohio ethics filing lists stock in NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and the warehouse landlord Prologis, a chip fund from the company he founded, and Bitcoin and Ethereum. Microsoft alone paid him $20,230 in dividends last year. As governor he would appoint the JobsOhio board and the state regulators who decide data center incentives, power plants and utility rules, in an industry that received $2.5 billion in Ohio tax incentives from 2017 to 2024. He called the boom "good" again and again in 2025, and when asked whether he would sell these holdings if elected, he did not answer.

Source

TiffinOhio.net: Ramaswamy wants data centers all over Ohio — and he's invested in nearly every tier of the industry he'd regulate. Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr, via TiffinOhio.net.

Take Action →
Vivek Ramaswamy Report Card

Related articles

Rob Bresnahan Tells Voters That 'to Big Data, We're Just Land and Dollar Signs.' He Holds Up to $2 Million in the Companies That Build Big Data.

Rob Bresnahan Tells Voters That 'to Big Data, We're Just Land and Dollar Signs.' He Holds Up to $2 Million in the Companies That Build Big Data.

Bresnahan's new Scranton-area ad casts him as the man standing between Northeastern Pennsylvania and the data center industry. His August disclosure lists between roughly $804,024 and $2.04 million in the chipmakers and equipment suppliers that industry runs on — and last year he called data centers 'catalysts for economic growth.'

Data Centers & AICorruption & Ethics Pennsylvania
Mike Rounds Pays His Senior Adviser More Than $153,000 a Year. Meta and a Tobacco Giant Were Paying Him Too.

Mike Rounds Pays His Senior Adviser More Than $153,000 a Year. Meta and a Tobacco Giant Were Paying Him Too.

Robert Skjonsberg has worked for Rounds for over a decade and is a registered South Dakota lobbyist for more than a dozen clients, among them Meta and Altria. Senate rules say a staffer at his pay grade may not affiliate with a firm that sells professional services — and he is listed as a co-owner of one.

Corruption & EthicsBillionaires & Big BusinessData Centers & AI South Dakota
Tommy Tuberville Says Alabamians Worried About Data Centers Are Repeating Chinese Propaganda. As a Senator He Bought and Sold Alibaba — and Was Late Disclosing About 130 Trades.

Tommy Tuberville Says Alabamians Worried About Data Centers Are Repeating Chinese Propaganda. As a Senator He Bought and Sold Alibaba — and Was Late Disclosing About 130 Trades.

Doug Jones pointed at Tuberville's Senate financial disclosures and asked whether Alabama's likely next governor personally profits from data centers. The disclosures show a China critic who traded a Chinese AI giant's stock and options, and broke the STOCK Act reporting it.

Data Centers & AICorruption & Ethics Alabama