The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is a foundation that takes donations from public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations, to finance independent research projects to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EID).

It was co-founded and co-funded with US$460 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust,[3] and the governments of India and Norway, and was later joined by the European Union (2019) and the United Kingdom (2020).

[9][10] Their concept was further expanded at the 2016 WEF in Davos, where it was discussed as a solution to the problems encountered in developing and distributing a vaccine for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic.

[3] Co-founder and funder, Bill Gates said: "The market is not going to solve this problem because epidemics do not come along very often — and when they do you are not allowed to charge some huge premium price for the tools involved".

[3] CEPI's creation was also supported and co-funded by the pharmaceutical industry including GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), with CEO Sir Andrew Witty explaining at the WEF, "It is super-disruptive when the red phone rings in our vaccine division because of a health emergency.

[3] CEPI was formally launched at the 2017 WEF in Davos, with an initial investment of US$460 million by a consortium that included the governments of Norway, Japan, and Germany, The Wellcome Trust, and the Gates Foundation;[11][3] India joined a short time afterwards.

[9] In April 2017, Richard J. Hatchett, former director of the U.S. government's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), became the full-time CEO.

[19] In 2020, CEPI was identified by several media outlets as a "key player in the race to develop a vaccine" for coronavirus disease 2019.

[21] The journal Nature said of the amount raised that: "It is by far the largest vaccine development initiative ever against viruses that are potential epidemic threats".

It can help pair boutique research and development companies with big vaccine manufacturers, work with regulators to streamline approval processes and resolve patent disputes on the spot.

The founding mission of CEPI was "equitable access" in pandemics: selling vaccines to developing nations at affordable prices.

As of March 2020,[41][5] a full-time staff of 68[4] that runs the organisation under the direction of a chief executive officer, Richard Hatchett.