Varda Raises $42MM Series A, to build humanity’s first Space Factories
Funding co-led by Khosla Ventures and Caffeinated Capital, bringing total to $53mm raised in 7 months since founding
Torrance, CA — July 28th, 2021—Varda Space Industries, a company building space factories, announced a $42mm Series A. The company — founded just 8 months ago — has raised over $53mm to date, showing the appetite for Varda’s near-term, pragmatic, and commercially viable approach to space manufacturing. The company produces an assortment of materials that are only possible to make in the zero-gravity environment of space and brings them back to customers on Earth. The company will launch its first space factory in Q1 2023 and return a first batch to Earth a month later.
“There are many high-performance products that are only possible to make in zero-gravity, which is a manufacturing capability that cannot be replicated in any factory on Earth,” said Will Bruey, CEO at Varda and formerly at SpaceX for 7 years. “We have a team stacked with aerospace talent in the prime of their careers, focused on getting working hardware to orbit as quickly as possible.”
The Series A round was co-led by venture capital firms Khosla Ventures (primary backers of Rocket Lab), and Caffeinated Capital (primary backers of Boom Aerospace), with participation from Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, and all pre-existing investors.
Turning Experimental Research into Products that People Can Access and Use
The International Space Station has done extensive microgravity manufacturing research, showing vast benefits for material and product production such as fiber optics, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and human organs. Before Varda, there was not a clear path to transitioning that successful experimentation to commercially scalable solutions in the near term.
“Varda is standing on the shoulders of giants that pushed microgravity manufacturing forward over the past few decades.” said Delian Asparouhov, president and co-founder of Varda and investor at Founders Fund. “By creating a ‘free-flying’ space factory, coupled with our own in-house reentry vehicle, Varda has developed a fully commercial scalable solution to produce materials in zero-gravity. Our company produces value differently – utilizing aspects of outer space to benefit human beings here on Earth, rather than sending humans to space. Likewise, our focus on pragmatism will result in this happening in 18 months, not 5+ years from now like most other proposed plans.”
Future Space Trends
Varda is currently the only company aiming to operate entirely on commercial supply chains and is well positioned to be the worldwide leader in commercial microgravity manufacturing. The company plans to offer a wide array of microgravity materials to its customers in the coming years, partnering with forward-looking organizations committed to improving quality of life and lowering costs for their end-consumers.”
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For more information on Varda:
www.varda.com