Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech company Moderna is opening an office in Seattle to build up its tech capacity, the company announced Friday morning.
The office will focus on artificial intelligence, cloud-based tools, and other technology applications.
The company hopes to tap into Seattle’s tech talent pool, with plans to hire up to 220 workers at the new office, which opens April 4.
“We are in a significant growth phase and we are willing to go where the talent is,” said Brad Miller, Moderna’s chief information officer who previously worked at Seattle-area giants Amazon and Microsoft.
The new office will support operations throughout the company, from finance to human resources. But it will also play a big role in growing the company’s capabilities in applying artificial intelligence to biomedical applications, said Miller. “Embedding AI everywhere we can is going to really be a successful scaled model for us,” said Miller.
The 13-year-old company also sees an opportunity to deepen its relationship with Amazon Web Services, its cloud provider that supports its DNA sequencing and other work, said Miller.
The news is a bright spot for Seattle’s biopharma scene which has seen employee cuts at several biotech companies recently as part of wider layoffs in the industry, including at NanoString Technologies, Sana Biotechnology, Eliem Therapeutics and Neoleukin Therapeutics.
Novo Nordisk last week announced it was shutting down a lab in Seattle and laying off 86 workers, but will continue to have operations in the city focused on digital therapy, data science and artificial intelligence.
Miller said Moderna sees the recent layoffs in the tech industry as an opportunity. “This timing was just right for us,” he said.
Moderna’s anticipated growth in Seattle is part of an expanding employee base for the company. It increased its employee headcount to 3,900 at the end of 2022 from 2,700 at the end of 2021. It plans to add 2,000 employees this year and open another new office in South San Francisco which will house some of its genomics team.
The company invested $1.2 billion in research and development during the fourth quarter and plans to spend $4.5 billion this year.
Moderna’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine has helped supercharge the company’s revenue over the past few years. It reported $19.3 billion in revenue for 2022, up from $18.5 billion in 2021.
The vaccine is the company’s only approved product, but it has 48 mRNA programs for flu shots, cancer vaccines and other potential products, with 38 in clinical trials.
Moderna’s vaccine for RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) was recently granted breakthrough therapy designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, enabling it to receive expedited review by the agency. Moderna also has an investigational cancer vaccine that also has breakthrough designation in combination with Merck’s Keytruda.
The company’s other U.S. locations outside of Massachusetts are in Atlanta, Bethesda and Princeton. The Seattle office will be based in the city’s South Lake Union neighborhood.
Miller was a general manager at Amazon before leaving the company in 2015. He joined Moderna in January, moving from the role of chief technology officer at Capital One. Miller, who is based in the Boston area, also worked at Microsoft as a senior security strategist.
Other outside biopharma companies with a presence in the Seattle region include Astellas Biopharma, Gilead Sciences, 2seventy bio and Bristol Myers Squibb, which employs more than 1,400 in the region. Seagen, which was founded in the Seattle area, is the region’s largest biopharma employer.
Seattle is also home to the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design and its dozens of trainees who have spun out companies like Cyrus Biotechnology and Icosavax.
