Ramon Zapata
Chief Financial Officer
2024 – Present
2 years (current)
Legacy
Zapata oversees BioNTech's financial discipline and cash deployment during the high-investment oncology pivot. Zapata joined BioNTech as CFO effective July 1, 2025, bringing more than 25 years of pharmaceutical finance experience including a prior CFO role at Novartis's biomedical research organization, to help manage BioNTech's finances as the company invests COVID-vaccine profits into its oncology pipeline. His appointment came as BioNTech shifted from the extraordinary, one-time cash generation of the COVID-19 vaccine period toward funding a more traditional, multi-year oncology drug-development pipeline requiring disciplined long-term capital planning. Earlier in his career he also held finance roles at Mondelez International, giving him consumer-goods financial-planning experience in addition to his pharmaceutical-industry background before joining BioNTech. He succeeded longtime CFO Jens Holstein, who had guided BioNTech's finances through its 2019 Nasdaq IPO and the subsequent COVID-19 vaccine revenue surge before departing ahead of Zapata's 2025 appointment.