After flying three missions into low-Earth orbit this year, Varda Space Industries appears to be making credible progress toward developing the nascent manufacturing-in-space industry.
Investors seem to think the same, as the California-based company announced an impressive $187 million Series C round of funding on Thursday. This brings the company's total amount of money raised since its founding in 2021 to $325 million.
"A decent chunk of the capital is going to go toward scaling up our production and operations," said the company's cofounder and president, Delian Asparouhov, in an interview. "And another chunk of that we're going to invest in our next-generation capabilities and spacecraft. With a vehicle like ours, there is a benefit to increasing the percentage of the total vehicle that is reusable."
Varda has developed a small, autonomous spacecraft that is capable of carrying several kilograms of payload into orbit. There, the spacecraft can support microgravity experimentation, autonomous manufacturing, hypersonic experiments, and more. Varda flew its first mission, W-1, in late 2023 and landed it successfully in 2024. During the flight, the spacecraft demonstrated pharmaceutical processing by growing crystals of the antiretroviral drug ritonavir.
Lots of Ws
This year, the company has launched three more missions, W-2, W-3, and W-4, with a variety of customers, including the US Air Force and NASA.
The W-4 mission, launched on June 24 as part of SpaceX's 14th Transporter mission on the Falcon 9 rocket, is notable because, for the first time, Varda flew its own spacecraft bus and reentry vehicle to support the capsule in flight. Previous missions used hardware developed by Rocket Lab. Asparouhov said the mission is going great so far, but the acid test for Varda's new hardware will come later—and during the reentry process later this fall.
Varda has a 30,000-square-foot facility in El Segundo to process its spacecraft and a laboratory in which pharmaceutical scientists can process materials for crystallizing biologics such as monoclonal antibodies. Asparouhov said the company aims to fly four missions using its own spacecraft next year before increasing the cadence of missions from there.