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.”