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Factories in space — manufacturing materials impossible on Earth, returned by hypersonic capsule
HQ: El Segundo, CA, United States | Founded: 2021 | Employees: ~300 (est.) | Stage: Late Stage VC ($1.58B valuation) | Website: https://www.varda.com
Varda Space Industries was founded in January 2021 by Will Bruey, a former SpaceX Dragon capsule engineer, and Delian Asparouhov, a Founders Fund partner, on a thesis that sounds like science fiction and has become logistics: some materials — especially pharmaceutical crystals — form better in microgravity, and the only way to industrialize that is to build factories in orbit and ship the product home. The enabling hardware is the reentry capsule: a blunt-body hypersonic vehicle that survives atmospheric reentry and lands cargo intact.
Execution has been relentless. W-1 (2023) proved the concept — growing ritonavir crystals in orbit and returning them despite an initial FAA/USAF reentry-permission denial that delayed landing; W-2 through W-4 followed, with W-4 spending nearly a full year
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