TOKYO — Varda Space Industries, a company developing spacecraft for microgravity life sciences and hypersonics research, has raised $187 million to expand the scope and cadence of its missions.
The company announced July 10 that it closed a Series C round of $187 million led by venture funds Natural Capital and Shrug Capital. Several other investors participated, including Founders Fund, Peter Thiel, Khosla Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, Lux Capital and Also Capital.
The round was the first for Varda, based in El Segundo, California, since a $90 million Series B round in April 2024. The company has raised $329 million to date. Varda did not disclose the company’s valuation with this round.
Varda has completed three missions to date, launching spacecraft into orbit to perform microgravity research, bringing the results back in capsules that can also collect hypersonic data during reentry. A fourth mission, W-4, launched on the Transporter-14 rideshare mission June 23 and remains in orbit.
The company said the new funding will allow it to both increase its flight rate and to expand its work in microgravity life sciences. “With this capital, Varda will continue to increase our flight cadence and build out the pharmaceutical lab that will deliver the world’s first microgravity-enabled drug formulation,” Will Bruey, chief executive of Varda, said in a statement.
The company said it recently opened a 10,000-square-foot lab space in El Segundo to support pharmaceutical research. One example Varda cited of that research was on monoclonal antibodies, which are used in both diagnosis and therapeutic treatments of diseases. The company noted the market for such antibodies is currently $210 billion.
“Our new lab space is an investment in our belief that in-space pharmaceutical manufacturing will drive the foundation of the orbital economy,” Adrian Radocea, Varda’s chief science officer, said in a statement. “By expanding, we can support work on more complex molecules and ultimately increase cadence to achieve the turnaround times the pharmaceutical industry expects.”
The company sound a second source of revenue through collecting data on the hypersonic environment during reentry. The company’s third mission, which landed in South Australia in May, focused on gathering data for military hypersonic research. The company announced a four-year contract with the Air Force Research Lab in December 2024 worth $48 million to fly military payloads on its reentry capsules.
As part of Varda’s efforts to scale up the pace of its missions, the company moved production of the main satellite bus in-house, starting with the W-4 mission. The first three missions used a satellite bus provided by Rocket Lab.
The company also secured a Part 450 reentry license from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation that allows unlimited landings over five years at Australia’s Koonibba Test Range, rather than apply for a reentry license for individual missions. Varda executives said that would support the company’s goals of flying missions monthly.
“Through multiple flights, the Varda team has proven a repeatable orbital-reentry capability, attracted serious DoD demand, and is now turning that momentum toward a world-class crystallization lab that will unlock microgravity manufacturing for life-changing medicines and other high-value materials,” Ravi Tanuku, a general partner at Natural Capital and a member of Varda’s board, said in a statement.