"Maybe that's the time to offer up the patent and move on," the investor said. The company says this is not their current thinking.
Trying to save the world has taken up a lot of the management's time and energy, at a time when the pharmaceutical giant is in the process of buying a US company for $40bn and a Japanese firm for $7bn.
That would be enough of a to-do list for any chief executive under normal circumstances.
But any thought that this vaccine mission could be both Mr Soriot's legacy and his epitaph seems very premature.
One big investor pointed out that Mr Soriot will earn a lot of "brownie points" for taking on something so ambitious and delivering a vaccine that works.
"He gets extra brownie points on the Environment Social and Governance (ESG) scorecard and he is still the person who turned around a company that was a mess when he took over," said the investor.
"I don't sense knives are being sharpened for him yet."
The lasting legacy of this French businessman may end up being making AstraZeneca a household name of which the UK, at least, seems genuinely proud. pgslot