I’ve always been drawn to the integration of opposite fields, like hardware and software. Unrelated fields often fuel and accelerate each other.

In medicine, Moderna shows what’s possible when software and biology merge. Here’s why their story is both groundbreaking and undervalued:

Key points:

• mRNA enables the rapid development of more effective and targeted drugs compared to traditional methods. It works like biological code, instructing cells to produce antibodies to fight viruses, bacteria, and even cancer

• The company should be worth $51 billion with $3.2 billion in projected operating income by 2028 and 25% annual growth

• Yet, its enterprise value is just $7 billion after subtracting $9 billion in cash on its balance sheet, an example of panic-driven price dislocation, following the appointment of vaccine skeptic RFK Jr. as Health Secretary

• As the first cloud-native pharmaceutical company, Moderna is positioned to dominate the AI-driven future of medicine and high-performance computing.

The Technology Behind Moderna

With mRNA, it’s four letters, like zeros and ones with software. You code everything. These provide a blueprint for arranging A, T, C and G – the building blocks of DNA. The only difference with most vaccines is the order of those letters.

The real innovation lies in how Moderna improves two key factors: the chances of drug approval and the cost of manufacturing. Both get better as the number of drug candidates in their pipeline increases, creating a compounding advantage.

Compare this to traditional pharma, where production starts from scratch each time, the success of one drug telling you nothing about the success of the next, and you can see why Moderna may be onto something big.

Born in the Cloud

When the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 was released, Moderna’s scientists inputted the data into their software, and within 10 minutes, they had a proposed vaccine design. This speed is unprecedented in traditional pharma, where each drug is developed in isolation, often from scratch.

"We were born in the cloud," Moderna’s CEO, Stéphane Bancel, proudly states.

What Bancel means goes far deeper than just using AWS cloud to automate drug design and manufacturing processes. Moderna’s platform mirrors a sophisticated software development pipeline where mRNA sequences are managed like git repositories, where each therapeutic is a "branch" from core templates. Each failed attempt becomes a valuable version of history, documenting what doesn't work.

This digital-first architecture speeds up R&D through automation and enables Moderna to achieve breakthroughs in timelines that would otherwise take years.

Four Advantages of Cloud-Native Medicine

Moderna’s cloud-first platform combines advanced automation, data-driven insights, and a standardized mRNA framework to deliver groundbreaking efficiencies in drug development.

1. Higher Clinical Trial Success Rates

• Moderna has achieved what was once thought impossible in drug development: a 43% clinical trial success rate compared to the industry average of 6.5%.

• This improvement is possible because their mRNA molecules are nearly identical across all applications, varying only in the encoded genetic sequence .

• Because of this framework, each development cycle compounds improvements and systematically reduces risks across toxicology, delivery mechanisms and manufacturing

2. Lower R&D Costs

• Moderna’s standardized mRNA framework has drastically reduced the costs of drug development by enabling faster, more efficient iteration.

• Their automated infrastructure accelerates the design and testing process, as demonstrated by the COVID-19 vaccine, developed in minutes rather than years.

• The combination of robotics and cloud computing enables millions of parallel biological experiments, with every iteration enriching their data ecosystem.

• This creates a feedback loop of compounding efficiencies, lowering costs while increasing the likelihood of success for future therapeutics.

3. Accelerated Time To Market

• Moderna's automated platform proved its power by producing billions of COVID-19 vaccine doses in record time

• A strategic $1B manufacturing investment in 2024 expands capacity and deepens their competitive moat

• Faster commercialization reduces weighted average cost of capital by accelerating cash flows

• Their global manufacturing network enables simultaneous market entry worldwide, maximizing revenue potential and maintaining pricing power by deterring competitors

4. Individualized Cancer Therapeutics:

• Moderna has rapidly expanded its pipeline from 5 Phase 2/3 medicines to 25 in just four years, including highly personalized cancer treatments.

• These therapies target unique genetic mutations in each patient’s tumor, replacing generalized approaches with tailored solutions.

• Early results from the mRNA-4157 Phase 3 trials highlight the potential for cancer to become a manageable, personalized condition rather than a one-size-fits-all battle.

Outlook: Navigating Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Vaccine Criticism

While Robert F. Kennedy Jr. focuses on claims linking childhood vaccines to autism, his stance bears no relevance to Moderna’s primary work, which targets adult therapeutics.

His job is to run the Department of Health, not rewrite FDA policy, which is grounded in clinical trial data. Overhauling this system would take years and jeopardize lives by delaying access to critical medicines—an outcome that is unlikely going to gather popular support. In the meantime, Moderna continues to deliver on its pipeline.

The next few years will be critical, with plans to launch 10 new therapeutics and generate $6 billion in revenue, scaling to $15 billion over time. Yes, the stock could dip further in the short term. But below $10 billion in enterprise value, investors would effectively be getting the company—and its transformative platform—for free.

Although we’ve seen similar situations before—take MGX, which has delivered an 80 percent return since my blog post about the company.

Economics of Programmable Medicine

Moderna’s valuation snapshot (January 4th 2025):

• Market Cap: $16.2B

• Cash & Securities: $9B

• Debt: $0

• Enterprise Value (EV): $7.2B

Projected Financials (2026-2028):

• Revenue Growth: From $3.8B to $6B (25% annual growth)

• Operating Income (Pre-R&D): $3.2B (Revenue: $6B - Costs: $2.8B)

• Cost of Sales: Expected to decrease to 30%

Comparable Valuation of Similar Cloud Businesses:

• A company with similar margins and growth (21% annually) typically trades at 15.9x next year’s revenue (NTM), valuing Moderna at $51B EV.

Final Thought: The Tesla Moment for Medicine

As I think about conversations about computational medicine, it’s that they often emphasize proprietary data and AI, but Moderna's journey highlights the power of integrating custom biology with software engineering.

The combination of a repeatable molecular framework with cloud-native software, mirrors the technical advantages achieved by Tesla and Apple—where vertical integration of hardware and software disrupted industries. Moderna applies the same principle to medicine by navigating the axis between molecules and programmable software code, with direct impacts on human health, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This new technological layer — combining physical sciences with advanced computing power, shows how Moderna has the potential to accelerate therapeutic development from years to mere minutes. It’s clear that programmable medicine is no longer just a distant idea but it’s really starting to take shape, in the cloud.

What exciting tech themes have caught your attention lately? Let’s connect and continue the discussion on @vincent_hus