Timothy Springer

Harvard biology professor and serial entrepreneur Timothy Springer saw promise in a fledgling biotech firm a decade ago and made an early investment. Now, primarily as a result of that bet — on a Cambridge, Massachusetts company called Moderna — he’s a billionaire. Springer was a founding investor of Moderna in 2010, when he put about $5 million into the company. Now, a decade later, that initial investment is worth nearly $870 million. But long before Covid-19 had emerged onto the scene, Springer was already thinking about how the company’s groundbreaking mRNA technology could help in the development of vaccines. In 2017, he donated $10 million to establish the Institute for Protein Innovation, an independent nonprofit dedicated to researching protein science and helping biotech entrepreneurs realize their ideas.