Lux Capital and Natural Capital led the round. Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, General Catalyst, 8090 Industries, Giant Step, and Also Capital also participated.
Varda builds its business around the advantages of processing materials in orbit. The absence of gravity allows medical ingredients to crystallize in ways that are impossible on Earth, opening the door to new and more effective medicines. Beyond pharmaceuticals, the company’s capsules serve semiconductor manufacturers who benefit from similar low-gravity conditions, as well as national security customers testing technology at hypersonic reentry speeds.
Since 2023, Varda has flown six reentry missions and has more than a dozen more planned over the next two years. Two of those missions, W-8 and W-9, are set to launch aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 as soon as Thursday.
W-8 will carry sensors to study the capsule’s temperature and other data during reentry, and includes thermal protection materials on its exterior under a US military study. W-9 includes a Department of Defense payload to test navigation during hypersonic flight, and its exterior will test advanced heat shield tiles from Syensqo.
The scale of the round represents a significant vote of confidence in the commercial in-space economy, a segment that has struggled to prove its unit economics. At a $1.6 billion valuation, Varda is positioned as a category leader in a field that has often been treated as experimental.
The near-term milestone to watch is the launch of the W-8 and W-9 missions aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18, which could lift off as soon as Thursday, alongside the more than a dozen additional reentry missions Varda has planned over the next two years.
