Universal flu vaccines used to sound like science fiction. Then Merck paid $9.2 billion to acquire Cidara Therapeutics and its universal flu preventive MK-1406. Suddenly, the category has a price tag — and everyone’s paying attention.

Enter Centivax, which just closed a $37 million financing round to push its own universal influenza vaccine into Phase 2 clinical development. The round was led by Structure Fund, with participation from Meiji Seika Pharma — a Japanese pharmaceutical company — along with Sigmas Group, Kendall Capital Partners, and notably, Patrick and John Collison, the founders of Stripe.

Yes, the payments guys. In a vaccine company. That’s the kind of crossover that makes you look twice.

This isn’t Centivax’s first rodeo. Their prior $45 million Series A was led by Steve Jurvetson’s Future Ventures, and they used it to get Centi-Flu 01 into a Phase 1A trial — the first patient was dosed just last month. The vaccine is designed to target conserved epitopes across highly variable influenza strains, the kind that don’t mutate fast enough to escape. If it works, you wouldn’t need a new shot every year because some committee in February guessed wrong about which strain would dominate next winter.

The Meiji Seika participation is worth flagging. Having a Japanese pharma company in your cap table isn’t just money — it’s potential commercial infrastructure in Asia. And the oversubscribed round suggests investors see this as more than speculative.

With $82 million in total funding and Phase 2 on the horizon, Centivax is positioning itself as the next serious player in a category that Merck just validated at $9.2 billion. The question is whether their conserved-epitope approach can deliver cross-strain protection in humans — and we’ll start finding out soon.