In October 2013 CureVac launched a collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company, for the development of novel flu vaccines. Also in 2013, CureVac announced the fourth in a series of partnerships with the Cancer Research Institute and Ludwig Cancer Research to enable clinical testing of novel cancer immunotherapy treatment options. In March 2014, CureVac won a €2 million prize awarded by the European Commission to stimulate new vaccine technologies that might help the developing world, because the company's research could lead to a new generation of vaccines that don't need refrigeration. Later, in July 2014, CureVac signed an exclusive license agreement with Sanofi Pasteur to develop and commercialize an mRNA-based prophylactic vaccine. By September 2014, the company licensed the global rights for its Phase I candidate – CV9202 – to Boehringer Ingelheim. Boehringer was to conduct trials using the mRNA vaccine in combination with afatinib in advanced and/or metastatic epidermal growth factor receptor mutated non-small cell lung cancer as well as inoperable stage III NSCLC. In March 2015, a CureVac investor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, agreed to provide separate funding for several projects to develop prophylactic vaccines based on CureVac's proprietary mRNA platform. By September 2015, CureVac entered into a collaboration with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative to accelerate the development of AIDS vaccines, utilizing immunogens developed by IAVI and partners, delivered via CureVac's mRNA technology. That same month, CureVac announced it would open a United States hub in Boston, Massachusetts. In accordance with its deal with Lilly, the company began construction on a production facility in 2016. By 2017, CureVac had received approximately US$359 million in equity investments and was valued at US$1.65 billion. In June 2020, the federal government announced that the state-owned development bankKfW would immediately invest 300 million euros in Curevac, which will mean that it will hold a 23 percent stake in CureVac.
Reports of Trump administration overtures
On 11 March 2020, it was reported that CureVac AG's CEO Daniel Menichella was no longer the company's CEO, having been replaced by company founder Ingmar Hoerr. Menichella was reported to have met U.S. President Donald Trump on March 2. In what the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung qualified as "fake news," according to the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, Trump had attempted to persuade CureVac to relocate to the United States. Reuters,CNBC, and the South China Morning Post reported that the German Health Ministry had confirmed Welt am Sonntag's claims. Christof Hettich, the CEO of major CureVac investor dievini Hopp Biotech Holding stated that "We want to develop a vaccine for the whole world and not for individual countries". On 16 March, CureVac issued a statement on Twitter, stating "To make it clear again on coronavirus: CureVac has not received from the US government or related entities an offer before, during and since the Task Force meeting in the White House on March 2. CureVac rejects all allegations from press." On the same day, it was reported the European Union was investing millions of dollars into the company.
