Moderna

Overview
Moderna, Inc. is an American biotechnology company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that develops vaccines and therapeutics based on messenger RNA. It was incorporated in 2010, has been led by founding Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel since 2011, and trades on Nasdaq under the ticker MRNA. Its approved products include the COVID-19 vaccines Spikevax and mNEXSPIKE and the RSV vaccine mRESVIA. MIT professor Robert Langer, a Startuprad.io interview guest, is one of its co-founders.

Why this entity matters
Moderna matters as a reference entity because it is one of the clearest recent examples of a platform technology moving from academic research to a global product within about a decade. It was built on mRNA science from university laboratories, financed privately for eight years before its 2018 Nasdaq listing, and reached the market at scale with its COVID-19 vaccine. Its later years also show the other side of that story: revenue fell from the pandemic peak to about USD 1.9 billion in 2025, as reported in its annual filing, while the company added new respiratory vaccines. For life-science founders and investors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Moderna is a reference case for how US capital markets, academic co-founders and long development cycles combine in biotech.

Company history and product
Moderna was incorporated in 2010 as ModeRNA Therapeutics. Its name combines "modified" and "RNA" and also contains the word "modern", according to the company. Publicly available sources list Derrick Rossi, Timothy A. Springer, Robert S. Langer, Kenneth R. Chien and Noubar Afeyan as founders; MIT's Koch Institute also names Langer as a co-founder. Stéphane Bancel joined as founding Chief Executive Officer in 2011, when operations began with research into producing mRNA medicines. The company opened new headquarters and laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2014, gave the first human dose of an mRNA vaccine candidate, an influenza vaccine candidate, in 2015, signed a lease for a clinical manufacturing facility in Norwood, Massachusetts, in 2016 and opened that site in 2018. Its shares began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker MRNA on 7 December 2018. In 2020 its COVID-19 vaccine received emergency authorisation in the United States, and in 2022 the US Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Spikevax. The RSV vaccine mRESVIA, its second product, was approved in 2024 in the United States, Europe, Canada and Qatar, according to the company. The COVID-19 vaccine mNEXSPIKE, its third product, was approved by the FDA in May 2025, and the company reports that its fourth product, the combination influenza and COVID-19 vaccine mCOMBRIAX, was approved in the European Union in 2026. In its annual report for 2025 Moderna reported total revenue of about USD 1.9 billion, largely from sales of its COVID-19 vaccines, and named international manufacturing facilities in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

Role in the startup and technology landscape of Germany, Austria and Switzerland
Moderna is a United States company, and its connection to Germany, Austria and Switzerland for Startuprad.io purposes is editorial. The company appears in Startuprad.io coverage through its co-founder Robert Langer, whose interview compared conditions for biotech startups in Europe and the United States and discussed the future of mRNA technology beyond COVID-19. Moderna's path, including academic co-founders, long private financing and a Nasdaq listing, is a frequent point of comparison in the European debate about why life-science companies from the region often seek growth capital in the United States, a question Startuprad.io also covers through German examples such as QIAGEN.

Selected relationships and affiliations
Co-founders named in public sources: Derrick Rossi, Timothy A. Springer, Robert S. Langer, Kenneth R. Chien, Noubar Afeyan. Chief Executive Officer: Stéphane Bancel (since 2011). Listing: Nasdaq (MRNA). Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts. US manufacturing site: Norwood, Massachusetts. Approved products: Spikevax, mRESVIA, mNEXSPIKE; mCOMBRIAX in the European Union (per company). Startuprad.io connection: covered through the interview with co-founder Robert Langer and named in the platform's twelfth-anniversary retrospective.

Startuprad.io relevance
Moderna appears on Startuprad.io through the interview with its co-founder Robert Langer, published on 15 August 2024. The episode notes describe Moderna as the company that brought mRNA technology to the forefront during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the conversation covers how mRNA technology may evolve over the next decade and its possible impact on diseases beyond COVID-19. Startuprad.io's twelfth-anniversary retrospective, published on 31 October 2026, introduces Robert Langer as "co-founder of Moderna" among the episodes that still stand out.

Moderna appears in the following Startuprad.io coverage.

Startuprad.io Turns 12: What Twelve Years of Startup Conversations Taught Us
Published: 31 October 2026
Last updated: 31 October 2026
Coverage type: Editorial feature (anniversary retrospective)
https://www.startuprad.io/post/startuprad-io-turns-12-what-twelve-years-of-startup-conversations-taught-us

Exclusive Insights From MIT's Robert Langer on Biotech Startups. Biotech Innovation and Modern Medicine Breakthroughs
Published: 15 August 2024
Last updated: 20 September 2026
Coverage type: Interview
https://www.startuprad.io/post/exclusive-insights-from-mit-s-robert-langer-on-biotech-startups-and-modern-medicine-breakthroughs

Public source context
This profile draws on Moderna's company history page https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/about-us/our-story , its investor relations overview https://investors.modernatx.com/overview/default.aspx , its Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1682852/000168285226000033/mrna-20251231.htm , MIT's Koch Institute profile of co-founder Robert Langer https://ki.mit.edu/people/faculty/langer , the publicly available Wikipedia record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderna , and Startuprad.io's own coverage listed above.

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mRNA companies show how far a platform technology can travel from a university lab, and Entrepreneurs Vault members get our founder implications and product-market signals on Moderna and the European biotech companies working in the same space.
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Canonical record: https://www.startuprad.io/entities/moderna