Moderna Founders Make Forbes List of America’s Richest During Pandemic
Two of Moderna’s founders, and one investor, are among 44 new billionaires on the Forbes 400 list this year
Despite the pandemic’s toll on many businesses, the 400 richest Americans this year are, together, 40 percent richer than last year’s ultrarich, making the cutoff to get on the list higher than ever, according to the publication. And the list featured the most new names it has had since 2007, many of them billionaires in finance, tech and health care.
The trio each own a stake in the biotech company, which saw its shares soar last year and which — along with U.S. drug giant Pfizer and German partner BioNTech — logged billions of dollars in vaccine sales as the virus spread. U.S. firm Johnson & Johnson and Europe’s AstraZeneca say they don’t plan to profit from their shots during the pandemic.
For its rankings, Forbes estimated the fortune of Afeyan, the Moderna chairman, to be nearly $5 billion. The engineer, who was born in Beirut to Armenian parents and left during Lebanon’s civil war, has helped found many other companies.
The net worth estimates — which Forbes put out Tuesday based on stock prices from September, SEC documents and other records — stood at $4.9 billion for Langer, an MIT scientist who has hundreds of patents. It calculated $5.9 billion for Springer, a Harvard immunologist who put in millions when the company was founded in 2010.
Some big names that have been staples did not fare as well — former U.S. president Donald Trump fell off the list for the first time in 25 years after big-city properties, some of his core assets, lost value in the pandemic.
Others had banner years. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, topped it for the fourth year in a row, with Tesla’s Elon Musk in second place.
