How the answers frame Moderna
This snapshot covers 250 benchmark questions put to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok on 2026-09-29, or 1,250 answers in all. None of the questions named a brand. Moderna was named in 31 of those answers. By provider: Grok 11, ChatGPT 9, Perplexity 6, Claude 3, Gemini 2 (each out of 250). Every sector peer in the set was named more often, including Gilead Sciences at 50 and Elevance Health at 64. The larger names, Johnson & Johnson (192), UnitedHealth Group (179), CVS Health (174) and Pfizer (174), were named several times as often.
The mentions that did occur were classed as "Not Substantive" (2 in the stored data). In the two stored answers, Moderna sits in a brand list beside Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. One answer was to a question about which companies had the worst reputations after the opioid crisis (ChatGPT). The other was to a question about which big pharma companies have the best culture for scientists (Grok). The visible text of both answers is cut off. The excerpts we have do not show what either one said about Moderna, so we do not characterize it.
By question intent, Moderna's visibility was highest on leadership (7%), employer (6%), trust (5%) and innovation (5%). It was 0% on value, service, avoid, coverage and access, and pricing transparency. Even the strongest of these is a small share of answers.
Culture is subjective and can vary by site, team, role, or recent changes (e.g., restructurings or leadership shifts).
What the press is saying
PeakMetrics' news index recorded 9,921 Moderna mentions in the last 30 days, 1,644 with the company in the headline. That is well above Gilead (6,047) and roughly level with Novo Nordisk (10,698). The five recent headlines shown span several storylines: a request for authorization of COVID shots for young children, the availability of the "mNEXSPIKE" COVID vaccine, a CFO's RSU vesting and tax withholding filing, and a dispute with the US government over patent rights.
Three of the five sample headlines come from brighteon.com, and one of those makes an extreme claim about a death. We report it as the tone of that source's headline, not as a fact. The sample is five headlines, so it should not be read as the full mix of coverage.
The gap
The press treats Moderna as an active news subject, with product launches, regulatory requests, government disputes and executive filings. In this snapshot the assistants treat it as an occasional entry in generic pharma lists. Companies with similar or lower news volume, such as UnitedHealth Group (6,360) and CVS Health (6,043), were named far more often in the answers. Press volume and AI visibility are separate measures, and for Moderna they diverge sharply here.
The vaccine, patent and regulatory storylines in the headlines did not surface in the two stored answers. Those answers were shaped by questions about opioid-era reputation and scientist culture.
What to watch
A comms team for Moderna would take away that, in this snapshot, the assistants did not draw on the company's own news storylines when answering category questions. The brand appears mostly as a supporting name, and the two mentions were classed as not substantive. The most visible intents (leadership, employer, trust, innovation) are where it is worth checking which sources the assistants cite.
One caution comes from the Grok answer to "Which big pharma companies have the best culture for scientists?", which noted that such assessments are subjective and site-specific. This is a single run of live answers, so the counts will vary between runs. Repeat the benchmark questions before treating any of these figures as a pattern.