The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation this week made its largest private investment yet when it announced a $52 million equity stake in CureVac, a German company developing technologies for more effective vaccines.
The foundation’s investment in CureVac will help the company accelerate development of its proprietary mRNA technology and fuel the construction of a production facility.
“This collaboration will ensure that one of medicine’s most promising new technologies is applied to the challenge of reaching all people with the affordable, life-saving vaccines they need,” Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in a statement.
The New York Times details how the foundation, typically known for dolling out millions of dollars in grant money, is making more of an effort to invest in private companies like CureVac. It noted how the Seattle-based non-profit has a team of 15 “investment specialists” that have helped make a dozen direct equity investments in the past few years. Investing in private companies helps the foundation invest in “ideas that others might deem too risky,” and “gain access to technology that might otherwise bypass the needs of the poor,” the Times reported.
The foundation currently employs 1,223 worldwide and has $43.5 billion in assets. It gave out $3.9 billion in grants last year.
Here’s a bit more on the mRNA technology that CureVac is developing, and how it helps your body make its own vaccines:
