On Sept. 15, 2020, BioNTech announced that had receive a grant of up to 375 million Euro from an initiative by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to support the accelerated development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

The BNT162 vaccine program was one of three programs supported by the BMBF initiative, which provided a total of up to 750 million Euro to its funding recipients.