Varda Space Industries

Contacts

• Official website: https://www.varda.com/
• General inquiries: [email protected]
• Biopharma inquiries: [email protected]
• Government / hypersonic testbed inquiries: [email protected]
• Media / press: [email protected]
• Privacy policy questions: [email protected]
• Suppliers: purchase terms and quality clauses: https://www.varda.com/suppliers
• Varda Store (merchandise): https://shop.varda.com/
• Varda Store order questions (store platform support): [email protected]
• Careers: https://www.varda.com/careers

Locations

Looking up Varda Space Industries? Who it serves and where to go

Varda's principal aerospace and pharmaceutical-processing business serves organizations rather than the general public, although the company also runs a public merchandise store. According to its own site, "Varda is a microgravity-enabled life sciences company that processes materials in orbit and returns them to Earth." Its customers, as the site describes them, are biopharmaceutical companies (formulation and crystallization work), government agencies (a "hypersonic testbed for reentry and orbital flight testing"), and microgravity researchers. A newly announced $251 million funding round (September 30, 2026) is the most recent news; see the sections below for what is documented about the company, its FAA licensing, and the complaint checks.

• Business or government inquiries. Varda's contact panel on every page lists [email protected] (general), [email protected] (Biopharma), [email protected] (Government) and [email protected] (Media). No telephone number appeared on the Varda pages read on 2026-10-01.
• Privacy questions. The privacy policy (last updated June 30, 2023) says Varda does not collect personal information from website visitors unless they provide it, for example by email, and gives [email protected] for questions.
• Suppliers and vendors. varda.com/suppliers lists "Varda General Terms & Conditions" (dated Nov 29, 2023) and "Supplier Quality Clauses" (Jun 5, 2025). The terms PDF is titled "General Terms and Conditions of Purchase" and is Varda's purchase contract with sellers; it says it is governed by California law, with disputes submitted to a California court.
• Merchandise store. shop.varda.com lists apparel, accessories, drinkware and novelty items with prices (for example "Varda Unisex T-shirt $30"). Its FAQ answers both the return and the exchange questions with "all orders are final", says that orders ship from "Brilliant's fulfillment center in Waukegan, IL", and directs order or shipping questions to an email link that the page protects from scrapers; decoding that link's protected-email attribute on 2026-10-01 gives [email protected], an address at the domain brilliantmade.com rather than varda.com. The page also offers a support form.
• Job seekers. Varda's careers page says the company is "an equal opportunity employer and offer[s] competitive salaries, company equity, comprehensive benefits, catered meals, and more." Its open-positions list loads dynamically and showed "Loading jobs..." in a text fetch on 2026-10-01, so no specific roles are listed here.
• Concerns about a launch or landing. Reentries in the United States are licensed by the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation (the license and FAA statements are quoted below); this page did not verify a public complaint channel for that office. Landings in Australia are at the Koonibba Test Range operated by Southern Launch under an Australian Government return authorisation.
• If you are a seller or partner in a payment dispute, the purchase terms above are the contract to read first; this page has not reviewed any individual agreement.

FAA and Australian licensing record for Varda's reentries

The government records found for Varda in the sources checked are licenses and approvals, not enforcement actions. No FAA civil penalty, consent order, or mishap investigation naming Varda was identified in the sources listed on this page as of 2026-10-01; this is not a search of every FAA record.

First FAA reentry license (February 14, 2024). FAA License No. VOL 24-130, issued to "Varda Space Industries, Inc." on February 14, 2024, authorizes it "to conduct reentries of the Winnebago vehicle". Its Order A-1 authorizes reentry "For the first reentry only, unless this license is modified to remove this term", from Earth orbit to the Utah Test and Training Range, and requires Varda to provide "a summary of anomalies that occur during the mission that could be material to public safety or result in an environmental impact within three (3) weeks of a reentry mission"; Order B-1 requires liability insurance of "Ten Million Dollars ($10,000,000)". The license term "terminates five (5) years from February 14, 2024." The FAA's environmental Finding of No Significant Impact and Record of Decision, signed the same day, describes a "small (approximately 3-foot [ft] diameter) aluminum capsule" and states that the capsule and a Rocket Lab Photon satellite bus were launched "On June 12, 2023" on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Varda's platform page reports that W-1 reentered at the Utah Test and Training Range on Feb. 21, 2024.

Why the license came eight months after launch. The FAA's own documents give the dates above but do not describe the delay. SpaceNews reported on February 14, 2024 that the license came "After months of effort and one rejected application", and quoted Varda co-founder Delian Asparouhov saying, in an earlier interview, "It was ultimately a coordination problem amongst three different groups that had not worked through this operation before." Payload reported in April 2024 that "the FAA denied a September reentry license" and quoted a Varda statement: "Last year, FAA gave Varda formal, written permission to launch W-1 and Varda complied with all requirements in place to do so." On April 17, 2024 the FAA published a notice saying that, in general, it "will not authorize launch of a reentry vehicle as a payload that will require a reentry authorization to return to Earth unless the reentry vehicle operator has obtained the appropriate reentry authorization"; the notice does not name Varda, and Payload linked it to the W-1 episode.

Expanded license (June 18, 2025). An FAA statement dated June 18, 2025 says: "The FAA has authorized Varda Space to conduct multiple operations of its Winnebago reentry capsule until its current license expires in 2029", and that "Provided Varda operates under the authorized mission profile and vehicle design, it will no longer need to apply for mission-by-mission license approvals. The FAA will, however, continue to perform safety oversight of each operation and Varda must provide the FAA with accurate license updates." Varda's June 23, 2025 release describes this as the first vehicle operator license issued under Part 450. The license document for this revision was not located on faa.gov, so its terms are not quoted here.

Australia. The Australian Space Agency published (page dated 22 October 2024) that Southern Launch and Varda received authorisation "to undertake a series of returns in regional South Australia", "the first granted by the Australian Government for a domestically returning spacecraft under the amended Space (Launches and Returns) Act 2018", covering three Varda capsules landing at the Koonibba Test Range, which the agency page says "offers more than 41,000 square kilometres of uninhabited land." Varda's September 30, 2025 announcement says the companies agreed to extend the partnership for 20 reentries into Koonibba "through 2028". Varda's platform page reports W-2 (Feb. 27, 2025) and W-3 (May 13, 2025) landed at Koonibba.

Company background: entity, missions, customers and funding

Entity. Varda's privacy policy names "Varda Space Industries, Inc" at 225 S Aviation Blvd, El Segundo, CA 90245. SEC EDGAR lists "Varda Space Industries, Inc." (CIK 0001839597, state of incorporation DE) with Form D filings dated January 22, 2021, September 20, 2021 and January 18, 2022; EDGAR also lists two entities named "Varda Space Industries a Series of CGF2021 LLC" and "Varda Space Series D Jan 2026 a Series of CGF2021 LLC", whose role this page has not verified. Founding date. The company says it was founded in January 2021 by Will Bruey and Delian Asparouhov. Its SEC Form D filings (filed January 22, 2021, September 20, 2021 and January 18, 2022) each give 2020 as the year of incorporation of this Delaware corporation, and the first lists a date of first sale of December 23, 2020; the company page and the SEC filings are shown here side by side and this page does not reconcile them. The company says it has an office and production facility in El Segundo and an office in Washington, D.C.; recent press releases also mention office space in Huntsville, Alabama. A July 31, 2026 exhibit filed with the SEC by Beyond Meat, Inc. (a first amendment to a consent to sublease) names "Varda Space Industries, Inc., a Delaware corporation" as subtenant of approximately 54,749 rentable square feet at 888 N. Douglas Street, El Segundo, "concurrently herewith being increased to approximately 55,109 rentable square feet"; this is a separate address from the 225 S Aviation Blvd address on Varda's own pages. Will Bruey is named as CEO in the company's May 2026 release.

What it does (company description). Varda's W-series spacecraft is described as a free-flying satellite with a reentry capsule that "reenters the Earth's atmosphere at more than 18,000 miles per hour and reaching more than Mach 25" and lands by parachute. The company's biopharma page says processing in microgravity can produce more uniform crystals and that the effects are "locked" into the material before it returns to Earth. Varda's own releases describe producing a pharmaceutical for patients as a goal: its September 30, 2026 release says the new funding helps it "get closer to delivering the first medicine made in space".

Missions (Varda's platform page, mission pages and releases). W-1 reentered Feb. 21, 2024 (Utah Test and Training Range); W-2 Feb. 27, 2025 and W-3 May 13, 2025 (Koonibba Test Range). The W-5 mission page says W-5 launched November 28, 2025, "reentered at 6:07 AM Pacific time on January 29, 2026" and "was the company's fifth mission overall and fourth reentry", with a photo caption placing the reentry at Koonibba. The W-6 release (May 19, 2026) says the capsule landed at Koonibba. W-4 is described differently from a capsule landing. The platform page lists W-4 as "reentered", and the mission page gives launch June 23, 2025 and "Reentry date May 10, 2026", but its text says: "After nearly a full year in orbit, on May 10 2026, Varda operators performed a final maneuver to deorbit and reduce the orbital life of the W-4 demo vehicle, completing its mission." Varda's September 30, 2026 release says the company has completed "six successful reentry missions" with more than a dozen more planned through 2028. These company statements count the missions differently and this page does not reconcile them. Payload reported on September 30, 2026 that W-8 and W-9 were set to launch on SpaceX's Transporter-18 as soon as that Thursday; this page did not check whether they launched.

Customers and partners as the company states them. A May 13, 2026 release announced a research collaboration with United Therapeutics Corporation (Nasdaq: UTHR) on formulations of pulmonary-disease treatments. The W-6 release says that mission, like earlier missions with government payloads, was funded through the Prometheus program, "a partnership between the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and commercial space entities", and carried a Sandia National Laboratory nose tile and NASA Ames instrumented tiles; the W-4 release says Varda's heatshield production uses C-PICA material under a NASA Tipping Point award and technology-transfer agreement. These are the companies' own descriptions; contract values were not found.

Funding (company release and press). Varda's September 30, 2026 release says the $251 million Series D, led by Lux Capital and Natural Capital with participation from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, General Catalyst, 8090 Industries, Giant Step and Also Capital, brings total capital raised to $598 million. Payload reported the round "valued the company at $1.6B"; Varda's release did not state a valuation. An August 3, 2026 release announced Mikael Dolsten, formerly Pfizer's chief scientific officer and president of R&D, joining the board.

Complaint record and where we looked (as of 2026-10-01)

USAComplaints. No approved posts about Varda Space Industries were found in this site's database on 2026-10-01; this page therefore has no complaint themes.

Other places checked on 2026-10-01 (each is a scoped result, not a statement that nothing exists elsewhere):

• BBB. Re-run in a browser on 2026-10-01: a BBB search for "Varda Space Industries" (USA) returned a "No Results" page ("No results for 'Varda Space Industries'"), and a search for "Varda Space" in "El Segundo, CA" returned the same page. Both are search-result pages that loaded normally, not a Cloudflare challenge.
• Trustpilot. trustpilot.com/review/varda.com returned "Whoops! The page you're looking for could not be found." The first results page of a Trustpilot search for "varda space" listed other businesses (for example Space NK, Spacegoods and Space General) and no Varda Space Industries entry; an earlier search for "varda" listed Avarda and Vårda Ögon among others. Only first results pages were read.
• ComplaintsBoard. A search for "varda space" returned "No reviews matching 'varda space'".
• OSHA. The OSHA establishment search for "Varda Space" (all states, inspections from October 1, 2016 to October 1, 2026; the page states it reflects inspection data through 09/29/2026) returned "Your search did not return any results." This is OSHA's federal establishment database as displayed in the result page; state-plan (Cal/OSHA) records were not searched separately.
• Federal courts. A CourtListener RECAP search by case name "Varda Space" returned 0 results, and a CourtListener opinion search by case name "Varda Space" also returned 0. A RECAP full-text search for "Varda Space Industries" returned three dockets whose captions name other companies (Rocket Lab USA, Beyond Meat and Spire Global); those documents were not opened, and Varda is not stated by this page to be a party to any of them. CourtListener is not the complete PACER record.
• State courts. State-court records, including Los Angeles County Superior Court, were not searched, so this page makes no statement about state-court cases for or against Varda; a reader looking for one would need the court's own records.
• California Attorney General data-breach list. A search of oag.ca.gov's data-breach list for organization name "Varda" on 2026-10-01 displayed "There are currently no published reported breaches." That list contains only sample notices for breaches affecting more than 500 California residents.
• CFPB. Not checked: Varda offers no consumer financial product on the pages read.

Absence of listings in these places does not show that no customer or vendor has a dispute with the company; the page simply reports what the listed searches returned.

Is Varda Space Industries Legitimate?

Public records name Varda Space Industries, Inc. in several official sources. The FAA license document VOL 24-130 and an FAA statement of June 18, 2025 name Varda as a licensee; SEC EDGAR lists a Varda Space Industries, Inc. filer (CIK 0001839597) with Form D filings from 2021 and 2022; the Australian Space Agency's page names Varda as a party to a return authorisation; and varda.com gives an El Segundo street address and working contact addresses for business, press and privacy questions. The company's funding, customer and mission claims on this page are attributed to its press releases or to the press. This page assigns no rating or verdict: it reports the licensing record, including the 2023-2024 delay in obtaining the first reentry license, and the complaint-site checks above so readers can weigh them. Anyone paying money to a company should still read the specific contract and confirm who the contracting party is.

Frequently Asked Questions