Noubar Afeyan debuts on Forbes’ list of 400 richest Americans

PanARMENIAN.Net - Moderna co-founder and chairman Noubar Afeyan – an American entrepreneur of Armenian descent – has made to this year’s Forbes list of the 400 richest people in the United States.

Landing the 212th with an estimated net worth of $3.7 billion, Afeyan is among the 44 new names on the list, which now requires a minimum net worth of $2.9 billion, up $800 million from a year ago.

Afeyan is the founder and CEO of Cambridge, Mass. life sciences innovation firm Flagship Pioneering. He's also the chairman and cofounder of biotech firm Moderna, known for its Covid-19 vaccine which was authorized by the U.S. FDA in December 2020.

The entrepreneur has helped start more than 70 public and private healthcare and life sciences companies over the course of his career. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1962 to Armenian parents, he and his family fled the Lebanese Civil War to move to Montreal in 1975.

Beyond his stake in Moderna, he also owns shares in more than a dozen publicly traded biotech companies in the U.S.

Afeyan is a lecturer at Harvard Business School and also taught at MIT's Sloan School of Management from 2000 to 2016. In 2014 he helped launch UWC Dilijan, an international boarding school in the town of Dilijan in the mountains of northern Armenia.