Vivek Ramaswamy spent $3.3 million to buy 8% of BuzzFeed. How much damage could he do with that stake?
![Vivek Ramaswamy spent $3.3 million to buy 8% of BuzzFeed. How much damage could he do with that stake?](https://images.fastcompany.com/image/upload/w_1280,q_auto,f_auto,fl_lossy/wp-cms-2/2024/05/p-1-91130074-What-can-Vivek-Ramaswamy-do-with-his-8-activist-stake-in-BuzzFeed-.jpg)
It may be a small fraction of the company, but activist investors in Apple and ExxonMobil have accomplished a lot, with a lot less.
Wall Street has countless stories of investors acquiring stakes in companies for which they seem like very bad fits—Bill Gates investing in Waste Management, America’s leading garbage company; Warren Buffett getting into American Airlines, Delta, United, and Southwest a few years after calling the airline business a “death trap.” Yet Republican high-haired former presidential hopeful-turned-Trump campaigner Vivek Ramaswamy jumping into bed with left-leaning, listicle-heavy BuzzFeed is still likely to cause a double take.