Pfizer and moderna were not in the most promising vaccines list. MRNA was too new and untried. I'm not sure why Oxford/az wasn't ramped up more though, they were the ones everyone was waiting for.
Moderna received WARP funding though, I think they definitely were on the list of most promising vaccines. There were 6 most promising western vaccines: Biontech, Moderna, J&J, Oxford, Novavax and Sanofi. It was clear they were the ones needing preemptive production. Sanofi didn't play out, but others are doing ok.