Varda Space Industries has raised $251 million in a Series D funding round to expand its work on making pharmaceutical products in space. The company develops unmanned and reusable spacecraft that operate in low Earth orbit.
Varda is one of a small number of companies using space-based laboratories to develop medicines. In microgravity, there is almost no gravity, buoyancy, or sedimentation. This creates conditions that can help pharmaceutical ingredients form crystals in ways that are difficult to achieve on Earth.
The company believes this technology could help create new drug formulations that are purer and more effective than those made using traditional manufacturing methods.
The latest funding round was led by Lux Capital and Natural Capital. It is Varda’s largest funding round so far, bringing its total funding to $598 million and its valuation to $1.6 billion.
“We started Varda with the conviction that the first product manufactured in space and consumed on Earth would be a pharmaceutical,” said Varda co-founder and president Delian Asparouhov in a statement. “This round gives us the resources to increase our cadence, deepen our pharmaceutical partnerships, get closer to delivering the first medicine made in space.”
Varda Space Industries was founded in 2021 by former SpaceX engineer Will Bruey and Asparouhov. The company launched its first dishwasher-sized space capsule in 2023.
Varda has now completed six successful launches of its W-Series vehicles. All six missions successfully returned through Earth’s atmosphere, although the fourth capsule could not be recovered.
While making pharmaceuticals in space remains Varda’s main goal, much of its recent funding and business activity has come from government contracts. These contracts use Varda’s spacecraft for hypersonic testing.
Varda’s vehicles return to Earth at speeds of around 25 times the speed of sound. This creates conditions that are very difficult to reproduce on the ground and can be useful for military research and defense programs, including the US Air Force’s Prometheus program and the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative.
