Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) is a fascinating case of AI-driven drug development, but how does a clinical-stage TechBio company with an expected 2025 operational cash burn of roughly $14 million manage to command a market capitalization of around $36.45 million as of November 2025? You're looking at a company that's been pioneering AI-Immunology™ since 2008, and that platform just validated its worth by generating $7.5 million in Q3 2025 revenue from the out-licensing of its EVX-B3 vaccine candidate to MSD, with a potential for up to $592 million in future milestones. We need to understand the history and core technology behind this valuation, especially with its lead personalized cancer vaccine, EVX-01, showing unprecedented Phase 2 data this year, because that's where the real long-term value lies.

Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) History

Evaxion Biotech A/S has evolved from a Danish startup focused on decoding the immune system to a clinical-stage TechBio company, fundamentally driven by its proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform, AI-Immunology™. The company's trajectory is a clear case of a scientific idea-using AI to find the right vaccine targets-scaling into a public, partnership-driven biotech.

Given Company's Founding Timeline

Year established

The company was established in 2008, operating at the intersection of AI and medicine from the start.

Original location

Evaxion Biotech A/S is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Founding team members

The founding team included Niels Iversen Moller and Andreas Holm Mattsson, who helped pioneer the AI-Immunology field.

Initial capital/funding

While the initial seed capital is not publicly detailed, a major funding event was the Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq Capital Market in 2020, which generated gross proceeds of $20.0 million.

Given Company's Evolution Milestones

Given Company's Transformative Moments

The company's history is marked by a few pivotal decisions that moved it from a research-focused entity to a commercial-stage contender in TechBio. Honestly, the biggest shift came from validating the AI platform with hard clinical and financial results.

The 2025 fiscal year has been defintely transformative:

• Clinical Data Success: The October 2025 presentation of the EVX-01 Phase 2 data, with a 75% ORR in advanced melanoma patients, was a massive validation of the AI-Immunology™ platform's predictive power. This kind of efficacy data changes the entire partnership conversation.
• Strategic De-risking: The out-licensing of the EVX-B3 bacterial vaccine program to MSD in Q3 2025 was a game-changer. It brought in an immediate $7.5 million option fee and shifted the development costs for that program to a major pharmaceutical partner.
• Financial Strength: This partnership, plus the EIB debt conversion, significantly strengthened the balance sheet. Cash and cash equivalents stood at $10.6 million as of September 30, 2025, and the operational cash burn for the full year 2025 is expected to be around $14 million. The cash runway is now extended into the second half of 2027.

The next major decision point is MSD's potential option exercise for EVX-B2, which could bring in up to an additional $10 million in option fees in the second half of 2025. To understand the investor implications of these moves, you should be Exploring Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) Ownership Structure

Evaxion Biotech A/S is a publicly traded, clinical-stage TechBio company whose ownership is highly concentrated among a few key insiders and institutional investors, but with the majority held by the general public. This structure means that while the board and management have significant control, retail investors still hold the largest collective stake in the company's future.

Evaxion Biotech A/S Current Status

You should know that Evaxion Biotech A/S is a publicly held company, which means its shares are available for trading on a stock exchange. The company trades on the NASDAQ Capital Market under the ticker symbol EVAX. This public status requires the company to adhere to rigorous financial reporting and transparency standards set by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), giving you a clear window into its operations and financials.

As of November 2025, the company has a market capitalization (market cap) of approximately $45.33 million, which still places it firmly in the small-cap biotechnology space. Small-cap stocks can be more volatile, but they also offer a higher potential return if their AI-Immunology™ platform delivers on its promise. If you want to dive deeper into the investor base, you can check out Exploring Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Evaxion Biotech A/S Ownership Breakdown

The company's ownership structure is a classic biotech mix: a substantial insider stake, a small but strategic institutional presence, and a large retail float. Here's the quick math for the breakdown based on the 2025 fiscal year data:

What this estimate hides is the strategic nature of some institutional holdings. For example, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, LLC and MRL Ventures Fund LLC (both Merck-related entities) are among the largest institutional holders, with each holding a substantial percentage of the shares, reflecting their deep partnership, especially after the out-licensing of the EVX-B3 vaccine candidate to MSD (Merck & Co., Inc.).

Evaxion Biotech A/S Leadership

The leadership team steering Evaxion Biotech A/S is undergoing a significant transition in November 2025, signaling a pivot toward more aggressive commercialization and strategic partnerships.

The key change is the appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective November 24, 2025, which is defintely a near-term catalyst to watch.

• Dr. Helen Tayton-Martin: Appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective November 24, 2025. She brings extensive experience from co-founding Adaptimmune and overseeing its growth through a NASDAQ IPO.
• Dr. Birgitte Rønø: Returns to her role as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) after serving as Interim CEO since July 2025. She is the long-term leader of the company's core science.
• Thomas Schmidt: Permanent Chief Financial Officer (CFO), appointed in July 2025 to strengthen financial leadership and capital markets strategy.
• Andreas Mattsson: Founder and Chief AI Officer, overseeing the proprietary AI-Immunology™ platform that is the core of the company's value proposition.

This new executive structure, particularly bringing in Dr. Tayton-Martin's business development acumen, clearly shows the board is prioritizing the monetization of their AI-driven pipeline, moving from pure R&D to strategic execution.

Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) Mission and Values

Evaxion Biotech A/S's core purpose is to revolutionize medicine by decoding the human immune system using artificial intelligence (AI-Immunology™), aiming to transform patients' lives with novel, targeted vaccines. This mission is grounded in a deep commitment to pioneering innovation and addressing significant unmet medical needs in cancer and infectious diseases.

Given Company's Core Purpose

The company's cultural DNA is built around the intersection of technology and biology, a 'TechBio' approach that prioritizes finding new, effective treatments over standard, one-size-fits-all therapies. This is a high-stakes, high-reward model, but honestly, it's the only way to tackle the toughest diseases.

To be fair, this mission is not just abstract. It has tangible financial impact: the company's strategic focus and AI-Immunology™ platform led to a Q3 2025 net income of $4.6 million, a significant improvement from the prior year's net loss, driven largely by a licensing agreement with MSD (Merck & Co., Inc.).

Official mission statement

Evaxion Biotech's mission is fundamentally about patient impact, using their proprietary AI platform to outsmart complex diseases. They are committed to transforming patients' lives by providing innovative and targeted treatment options.

• Improve lives by unlocking the human immune system.
• Develop novel immunotherapies to outsmart cancer and infectious diseases.
• Provide innovative and targeted treatment options, not just standardized ones.

Here's the quick math: the operational cash burn for 2025 is expected to be around $14 million, so every partnership and milestone, like the $7.5 million option exercise fee from MSD, directly funds this mission-critical R&D.

Vision statement

The company envisions a future where its AI-designed immunotherapies radically improve treatment outcomes, becoming the forefront of immunological advancements. This means creating therapies that are both highly effective and accessible to those with high unmet medical needs.

• Be at the forefront of immunological advancements.
• Create effective and accessible therapies for cancer and infectious diseases.
• Demonstrate the link between AI predictive power and clinical response in patients, a key differentiator.

What this estimate hides is the potential for a massive value inflection point: the presentation of two-year clinical efficacy data for the personalized cancer vaccine EVX-01 in October 2025, which could validate the entire vision for personalized medicine.

Given Company slogan/tagline

While Evaxion Biotech does not use a single, formal, public-facing slogan in the traditional sense, their core purpose is often summarized in a clear, action-oriented phrase that captures their unique value proposition.

• Saving and improving lives with AI-Immunology™.
• AI-Immunology™ Powered Vaccines.

This focus on AI-Immunology™ is defintely the key message, underscoring that their innovation is rooted in a proprietary, scalable AI platform that decodes the immune system. You can read more about their aspirational goals here: Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX).

Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) How It Works

Evaxion Biotech A/S operates as a clinical-stage TechBio company, using its proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform, AI-Immunology™, to rapidly discover and develop novel vaccines for cancer and infectious diseases. This technology decodes the human immune system's response to identify the most effective targets, streamlining a process that usually takes years into a matter of weeks.

The company's value is created by advancing these AI-designed candidates through early-stage clinical trials and then out-licensing them to larger pharmaceutical partners for late-stage development and commercialization, as seen with their recent deal with MSD (Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA).

Given Company's Product/Service Portfolio

Given Company's Operational Framework

The operational framework is a lean, high-tech engine focused on discovery and early clinical validation, not mass manufacturing or commercial sales. The core process is a cycle of data-driven discovery, internal development, and strategic out-licensing.

• AI-Driven Target Identification: The AI-Immunology™ platform analyzes massive datasets to predict which antigens (targets) will trigger the strongest, most durable T-cell immune response in patients.
• Rapid Candidate Design: An automated vaccine design module, enhanced in 2025, significantly reduces the time needed to optimize and select the final vaccine candidate, accelerating the development timeline.
• De-risking and Validation: Evaxion Biotech A/S funds and manages the high-risk, high-reward Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials, like the one for EVX-01, to generate crucial human efficacy data.
• Monetization via Partnerships: The company generates revenue primarily through non-dilutive payments from major pharmaceutical partners. For example, the licensing of EVX-B3 to MSD secured a $7.5 million option exercise fee in the third quarter of 2025 and offers potential future milestone payments up to $592 million.

Here's the quick math: The company's expected operational cash burn for the full year 2025 is approximately $14 million, but the cash runway has been extended to the second half of 2027 following the MSD payment and capital market activities. This model keeps the balance sheet healthy by offloading expensive, late-stage development costs. You should check out Breaking Down Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors for a deeper dive.

Given Company's Strategic Advantages

Evaxion Biotech A/S's competitive edge isn't just in its pipeline, but in the platform that builds it. It's defintely a TechBio play, not a traditional biotech one.

• Proprietary AI-Immunology™ Platform: This scalable AI platform is the core differentiator, enabling the discovery of novel targets, like the ERV antigens in EVX-04, which are inaccessible to conventional methods.
• Big Pharma Validation: The out-licensing of EVX-B3 to MSD acts as a massive external validation of the AI platform's predictive power and the company's ability to execute. This significantly de-risks future partnership discussions.
• Broad Pipeline Scalability: The platform can be applied across oncology, bacterial, and viral diseases, demonstrated by programs like EVX-01 (personalized cancer), EVX-04 (off-the-shelf cancer), and new infectious disease candidates like EVX-B4 (Group A Streptococcus).
• Strong Clinical Data: The 75% ORR for EVX-01 in advanced melanoma, with durable responses, is a compelling data point that supports the platform's ability to generate highly potent vaccine candidates.

Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) How It Makes Money

Evaxion Biotech A/S is a clinical-stage TechBio company that generates revenue primarily through strategic partnerships, licensing its proprietary AI-Immunology™ platform, and out-licensing its AI-designed vaccine candidates to larger pharmaceutical companies.

This business model is typical for a biotech firm in the clinical phase; they monetize their research and development (R&D) assets by securing upfront payments, option exercise fees, and future milestone payments from partners like MSD (Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA), rather than from product sales. The goal is to fund their expensive clinical trials and platform development. You can learn more about how this impacts investor sentiment in Exploring Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Evaxion Biotech A/S Revenue Breakdown

The company's revenue profile for the trailing twelve months (TTM) ending September 30, 2025, is heavily skewed by a significant one-time payment, which is common in the biotech world. Here's the quick math based on the TTM revenue of approximately $7.65 million:

The massive spike in the Licensing & Option Fees stream is due to the $7.5 million option exercise fee received from MSD in the third quarter of 2025 for the bacterial vaccine candidate EVX-B3. This singular event represents nearly all of the TTM revenue, which is why the percentage is so high. The long-term growth for this stream is tied to the successful progression of pipeline assets through clinical trials, triggering future milestone payments.

Business Economics

Evaxion's core economic engine is its AI-Immunology™ platform, which is designed to decode the human immune system and accelerate the discovery of novel vaccine candidates for cancer and infectious diseases. The economics are centered around high fixed costs (R&D) and high-margin, non-dilutive revenue from partnerships.

• Pricing Strategy: The company does not currently sell a commercial product, so its pricing is based on the value of its intellectual property (IP) and clinical-stage assets. The MSD deal, for example, includes potential future milestone payments of up to $592 million, plus future royalties on sales, which is the ultimate payoff for their R&D investment.
• Cost Structure: The primary expense is Research and Development (R&D). For the second quarter of 2025, R&D expenses were $2.2 million, reflecting the cost of running clinical trials and maintaining the AI platform. This is a necessary burn to create future value.
• Operational Cash Burn: The expected operational cash burn for the full fiscal year 2025 is approximately $14 million, showing the net cost of running the business before major licensing deals. The company is still in the 'invest and develop' stage.

The goal is to generate enough non-dilutive capital from partnerships to cover the operational burn and push lead candidates like the personalized cancer vaccine EVX-01 through late-stage trials.

Evaxion Biotech A/S Financial Performance

The company's financial health is best assessed by its cash position and runway, as profitability is not yet the primary metric for a clinical-stage biotech.

• Net Income: The third quarter of 2025 saw a net income of $4.6 million, a significant improvement from the net loss in the same period last year. This positive result was driven almost entirely by the one-time $7.5 million option fee from MSD.
• Cash Position and Runway: As of September 30, 2025, cash and cash equivalents stood at $10.6 million. Critically, this cash, along with funds raised from capital markets in September and October 2025, has extended the company's cash runway into the second half of 2027. This is defintely a key metric for risk-aware investors.
• Earnings Per Share (EPS): The trailing twelve-month EPS as of October 28, 2025, was approximately -$7.00, reflecting the cumulative net losses typical of a development-stage company prior to the Q3 2025 net income. This will improve with the Q3 results factored in.

What this estimate hides is the lumpy nature of biotech revenue; a single large payment can temporarily flip the net income, but the underlying operational cash burn remains until a product is on the market or a steady stream of milestone payments is secured.

Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) Market Position & Future Outlook

Evaxion Biotech A/S is positioned as a high-risk, high-reward TechBio company, leveraging its proprietary AI-Immunology™ platform to compete in the nascent, high-growth personalized cancer vaccine (PCV) market. The company's future trajectory is heavily dependent on advancing its lead asset, EVX-01, following strong Phase 2 data and capitalizing on its strategic infectious disease pipeline, validated by a significant partnership with MSD.

The company's financial health as of November 2025 shows a TTM (Trailing Twelve Month) revenue of $7.65 million, driven primarily by collaboration and grant income, and a Q3 2025 net income of $4.6 million due to a one-time option fee. This fee, along with a recent capital raise, has extended the cash runway into the second half of 2027. That's a significant de-risking event for a clinical-stage biotech.

Competitive Landscape

The personalized cancer vaccine market is still pre-commercial, so direct market share is not yet measurable by product sales. Evaxion Biotech A/S competes against large-cap pharmaceutical companies and established biotech firms, primarily differentiated by its AI-Immunology™ platform, which is designed to accelerate neoantigen discovery and vaccine design.

Here's the quick math: The 2.8% figure for Evaxion Biotech A/S represents the company's TTM revenue of $7.65 million as a slice of the estimated $272.1 million global PCV market size for 2025, reflecting its current revenue-generating capacity from non-commercial sources like partnerships and grants.

Opportunities & Challenges

Industry Position

Evaxion Biotech A/S is a small-cap player in the massive and rapidly growing personalized cancer vaccine market, which is projected to reach $272.1 million in 2025 and grow at a CAGR of over 26% through 2034. The company's primary asset is its AI-Immunology™ platform, which is its core competitive advantage and a significant differentiator from the platform-agnostic or traditional neoantigen approaches used by competitors.

The recent Phase 2 data for EVX-01, showing a 75% ORR in combination with Merck's KEYTRUDA®, is a powerful clinical validation that strengthens its position for future partnerships and licensing deals. This result is defintely a key value driver. The company is actively executing on a partnering strategy, aiming to secure at least two new collaboration agreements in 2025, which is critical for non-dilutive funding and R&D validation. Breaking Down Evaxion Biotech A/S (EVAX) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors

• Focus on AI-driven discovery provides a speed advantage in identifying novel targets, like the non-conventional ERV (endogenous retrovirus) tumor antigens targeted by the new EVX-04 candidate.
• The MSD partnership for bacterial vaccines (EVX-B2 and EVX-B3) provides financial validation and a clear path for infectious disease assets, separating this pipeline from the higher-risk oncology programs.
• The company's market capitalization of approximately $40 million as of November 2025 reflects its early-stage, clinical-risk profile, contrasting sharply with the multi-billion-dollar valuations of its large-cap competitors.