Vivek Ramaswamy wants to be governor of Ohio. The investment company he co-founded in Ohio picked up and moved to Texas — and when he talked about it, he played down his role in a way the federal filing on his company's merger doesn't back up.
The company left Columbus
Ramaswamy co-founded Strive, an "anti-woke" investment firm, in Columbus in 2022. In November 2024, Strive announced it was moving its headquarters from Columbus to Dallas, and said it expected most of its Columbus staff to relocate to Texas by the end of March 2025.
Ramaswamy launched his campaign for Ohio governor in February 2025.
"I'm just a shareholder"
In July 2025, Ramaswamy went on Teamsters president Sean O'Brien's podcast. Talking about Strive, according to the Ohio Independent, he said:
"I'm not on the board. I'm just a shareholder of the company at this point."
What the filing says
A month after that podcast, Strive was merging with another company, the publicly traded Asset Entities, and the merger required a registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That Form S-4, filed August 5, 2025, describes Ramaswamy's place in the company very differently.
It says Ramaswamy, "together with an affiliated trust managed by a third-party trustee and investment advisor, control all of Strive's Class A Voting Common Stock prior to completion of the Merger."
Elsewhere, the same filing says Ramaswamy and that trust "are the sole beneficial owners of Strive's Class A Voting Common Stock" and "are expected to become the largest holders of voting power" of the merged company.
The filing also carves him out of the rules that cap how much of the new company any one holder can own. After describing how excess ownership can be forced back, it says: "These restrictions do not apply to Vivek Ramaswamy or his affiliates."
So he wasn't on the board. But "just a shareholder" isn't how anyone would describe the person who, with his trust, held every voting share in the company.
Why this one matters
There is nothing illegal about a company moving to Texas. What matters is the gap between what Ramaswamy says and what's on paper — on the exact issue he is asking Ohio voters to trust him with.
This isn't the only Strive story where the paper trail and the candidate disagree. We've reported that in August Ramaswamy's stake in Strive, now a leveraged bitcoin company, was worth about $71 million, while he backs a bill to point Ohio's public pensions at bitcoin. And a federal judge ruled he must face a whistleblower who says he demanded she break securities laws at the company.
What the filings show
Vivek Ramaswamy's company Strive moved its headquarters from Columbus to Dallas, and Ramaswamy later told a Teamsters podcast he was "just a shareholder." The SEC registration statement for Strive's merger, filed weeks later, says he and an affiliated trust controlled all of the company's voting stock and would be the largest holders of voting power after its merger.
Source
- Ramaswamy-owned business left Ohio for Texas — Ohio Independent
