Varda Space Industries’ latest funding round puts fresh thrust behind its ambitions in microgravity-made pharmaceuticals. The start-up, which deploys unmanned, reusable rockets into Earth’s low-orbit, secured another $251 million in a series D.
Varda is one of a handful of companies launching miniature laboratories into space, where the lack of gravity, buoyancy and sedimentation allows the company to crystallize pharmaceutical ingredients in a way that can’t be replicated on Earth. The technology, Varda asserts, will allow for drug formulations that are novel, purer and more potent than what terrestrial manufacturing can offer.
The latest capital haul, led by Lux Capital and Natural Capital, is Varda’s largest so far and brings the company's total fundraising haul to $598 million ahead of a $1.6 billion valuation.
"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."
Founded in 2021 by ex-Space X engineer Will Bruey and Asparouhov, Varda launched its first dishwasher-sized capsule in 2023. The company now has six successful launches of its W-series vehicles under its belt. All six missions successfully re-entered the atmosphere, and only the fourth capsule was unable to be recovered.
While pharmaceuticals are the company’s primary aim, near-term interest and funding for Varda has come largely from government contracts leveraging the vehicles for hypersonic testing. The vehicles re-enter from orbit at 25 times the speed of sound—an effect nearly impossible to replicate on the ground and valuable to military defense research like the Air Force’s Prometheus program and the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense.
In July 2026, Varda announced a partnership with United Therapeutics, it’s first with a large publicly owned pharmaceutical company. The deal “is a big milestone for us and the industry in the sense that his shows that space drugs have gone from research for science sake to research and development for patient’s said,” Bruey said in an interview with Space News.
Varda already has more than a dozen launches on the books through 2028. The increasing and reliable cadence is critical to its government and commercial partners.
For its next launch, slated for this week, Varda will send two capsules into space for the first time. The W-8 and W-9 capsules will hitch a ride on SpaceX’s soon-to-be retired Falcon 9 rocket.
Earlier this year SpaceX debuted its own Starfall program, which will use autonomous re-entry capsules to make space-based medicines and be a direct competitor to Varda.
In August, SpaceX Starfall announced a partnership with another of Varda’s competitors, space infrastructure firm Redwire.
Redwire’s PIL-BOX, an automated lab-in-a-box that grows small batches of high-quality crystals in space, was previously validated through partnerships with Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers Squibb. In 2028, Redwire will send a many as 32 of its mini space labs into orbit aboard SpaceX’s Starfall in what’s expected to be the largest commercial microgravity research mission to date.