Vivek Ramaswamy, Far-Right Politician And Investor, Buys 7.7% Stake In BuzzFeed

Vivek Ramaswamy, who unsuccessfully mounted a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, has purchased a 7.7% stake in BuzzFeed, a regulatory filing revealed Tuesday.

The purchase raised questions about Ramaswamy’s intent. The filing indicated he intended to be an activist investor, pursuing discussions with management and BuzzFeed’s board of directors about strategy and even changes to ownership of the company. BuzzFeed is the parent company of HuffPost, which it acquired in 2021. According to the filing, Ramaswamy bought the shares for just under $4 million in total.

The stock purchase made Ramaswamy a significant BuzzFeed shareholder. BuzzFeed shares spiked more than 50% on Wednesday before the market opened. Founder and CEO Jonah Peretti owns a controlling stake in the company.

As a Republican candidate for office, Ramaswamy was a hard-right nationalist, criticizing cancel culture — or “cultural totalitarianism,” as he called it — and saying “new secular religions like COVID-ism, climate-ism and gender ideology” had driven a “national identity crisis.”

Ramaswamy dropped out of the presidential contest and endorsed Donald Trump’s reelection bid in January after finishing fourth in the Republican caucuses in Iowa. Last week, Ramaswamy was among the Republican politicians showing solidarity with Trump by attending his hush money criminal trial in New York City.

Ramaswamy’s political career has featured both an oppositional stance toward mainstream media and an embrace of far-right talking points.

Earlier this year, he posted on social media a bulleted list of news topics — including “Charlottesville” and “‘Peaceful’ BLM riots” — with commentary saying the media employed “ad nauseam and flagrant lies.” (The 2017