Alice Walton talks about why she’s funding an Arkansas hospital. A billionaire biotech entrepreneur is up against a physician in the Ohio governor’s race. These stories and more in this week’s InnovationRx newsletter. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.
Alice Walton
Tim Pannell for Forbes
For the past seven years, Alice Walton, the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, has been planning a massive health complex, promising $350 million from her foundation for the 250-bed hospital and state-of-the-art cancer center in Bentonville, Arkansas. Last Thursday, it broke ground, with 76-year-old Walton, who is worth $118 billion, holding court in a bright pink jacket with her white hair pulled back in a bun.
The goal of the new health center: To improve access to care and outcomes in northwest Arkansas and throughout the state, with specialty care.
“Arkansas faces some of the nation’s greatest health challenges, with outcomes that regularly rank among the lowest in the country,” Walton tells Forbes by email. She referenced a 2019 study showing that residents in the northwest of the state spend nearly $1 billion annually to access specialty care elsewhere. “Think about what that means for someone with a heart condition or a cancer diagnosis. They’re leaving their home, family, and support system to receive critical care at one of the most difficult times in their lives.”
When Walton wants something done in Arkansas, it gets done. In 2005, she founded the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art as a non-profit charitable organization—a world-class museum tucked away in Bentonville. In 2025, she welcomed the inaugural class of 48 four-year MD students to her new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine there. And now this: The complex, known as the AWSOM Whole Health Campus, built in partnership with St. Louis-based health system Mercer, which is also contributing $350 million. Tyson Foods and the Tyson Family Foundation (of the poultry billionaires) will put in an additional $50 million.
“My vision is to create a hub-and-spoke model, to extend the reach of specialized high-quality care across the state ensuring patients and providers in rural communities have access to advanced services regardless of geography,” she says.
Thanks to Walmart and Tyson Foods, which is headquartered in nearby Springdale, northwest Arkansas’ population has grown rapidly, transforming its rural roots and straining healthcare capacity. Meanwhile, the less populated areas of Arkansas—a state in which the majority of counties remain rural—struggle with lack of facilities and doctors. Some 78,000 women and teen girls (aged 15 to 44), live in a county with nowhere to give birth and no obstetric services, according to a recent report from March of Dimes.
President Trump’s cuts to Medicaid have also put additional pressure on such rural communities. The state’s hospitals have recently been cutting services due to low insurance reimbursement rates, according to the Arkansas Advocate.
The $750 million in total funding will go to build the new facilities and to recruit doctors. The first building, which will focus on cardiac care in affiliation with the Cleveland Clinic, is slated to open in 2029.
Walton envisions a park-like environment with trees, ponds and gardens; biking and walking trails; and art both indoors and outdoors. That interweaving of nature is similar to how Crystal Bridges has incorporated running and hiking trails around its museum complex.
Walton’s healthcare philanthropy in northwest Arkansas could provide a kind of template for other charitably-minded billionaires. “Philanthropy can play a role in bridging gaps, and these days most rural communities have gaps they’re struggling to address,” she says. “I believe the work we do in Northwest Arkansas can be a blueprint for others to replicate in any other geography.”
Biotech Billionaire Versus Physician In The Ohio Governor’s Race
Vivek Ramaswamy, billionaire biotech entrepreneur and Republican candidate for Ohio governor
Getty Images
If Republican candidate and biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy wins the race for Ohio Governor, he would become the third-richest elected official in the United States. His wealth, which Forbes estimates at $2.3 billion, has been an issue in the race with Democratic candidate Amy Acton, a physician, pointing to his private jet travel as one indication that he’s out of touch with American families squeezed by rising costs.
Ramaswamy made his money through drug development company Roivant Sciences, which he founded in 2014 and took public via SPAC in 2021. Its market cap is currently a whopping $28.1 billion, up 78% year to date, helped by positive clinical results on its pulmonary hypertension drug earlier this month. Forbes estimates that Ramswamy has sold about $1.2 billion of Roivant stock in the 12 months that he’s been campaigning for Ohio governor.
Dr. Amy Acton, Democratic candidate for Ohio governor
Getty Images
The race not only pits an entrepreneur against a doctor, it also shows two different visions for healthcare after the Covid-19 pandemic. Acton, 60, led Ohio’s aggressive response to the Covid-19 pandemic as the state’s director of public health in 2020. Ramaswamy, 41, built his political profile during a failed Presidential campaign in which he accused the government of overreach in its Covid protections, a view that remains central to his campaign.
The race between Ramaswamy and Acton to succeed governor Mike De Wine, a Republican who is term-limited, is currently considered a tossup.
President Donald Trump, worth $7 billion, and Governor J.B. Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune who’s worth $4.2 billion, are currently the only two elected officials worth more than Ramaswamy.
Iambic Therapeutics To Go Public
Nvidia-backed AI drug discovery company Iambic Therapeutics filed to go public on Tuesday. The San Diego-based company reported revenue of $12.8 million from its collaborations and a net loss of $50.1 million for the six months that ended June 30 in its registration statement. It also said that its potential cancer drug targeting the HER2 protein could move to a pivotal clinical trial as early as 2027. The company announced a $40 million R&D partnership with AbbVie earlier this week for small-molecule drugs in immunology, neurology and oncology.
What We’re Reading
President Trump is moving to take control of billions of dollars in scientific research spending with an executive order that would create a new external committee with the power to veto NIH awards that don’t suit his political agenda.
Patients sued the makers of GLP-1 weight loss and diabetes drugs over the risk of sudden vision loss.
Scientists made mice with half a brain, then filled them with human organoids. The advance opens new ways to study brain development and disease–and raises a host of ethical questions.
The CDC won’t count four measles deaths in Pennsylvania, but on the ground doctors see the disease “accelerating” including cases of congenital measles, which used to be extremely rare because of vaccinations. CDC and the state have been in a standoff over what counts as a death from measles.
Viking Therapeutics shares surged 36% on Tuesday after it shared positive data on its experimental weight-loss drug. Forbes profiled Viking in January.
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