Space pharma gets serious

PLUS: Anduril hits sky-high $61B valuation

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Space has been a drug lab for decades — just one that never actually sold anything. Varda Space Industries wants to change that with a drug factory that rides to orbit on a SpaceX rocket, cooks up cleaner crystals, and parachutes home.

Its new deal with biotech firm United Therapeutics is the first real test of whether space manufacturing can graduate from science project to pharmacy shelf.

In today’s tech rundown:

  • This startup wants to sell space-made drugs

  • Anduril just doubled its valuation to $61B

  • Ray-Ban Display’s neural writing opens to everyone

  • NASA unveils new details on Artemis III

  • Quick hits on other tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

BIOTECH

Image source: Varda Space Industries (reentry capsule)

The Rundown: Varda Space Industries, the California startup that has been pitching drug experiments in space, just signed a deal with biotech firm United Therapeutics, marking what could be the first commercial path to drugs manufactured in orbit.

The details:

  • Varda and United Therapeutics will process small-molecule pulmonary medicines aboard Varda’s orbital platform across multiple LEO missions.

  • On Earth, sedimentation disrupts crystal formation; in microgravity, molecules assemble more slowly and uniformly, producing purer crystal structures.

  • Varda already crystallized HIV drug Ritonavir in orbit, which CEO Will Bruey calls “just the tip of the iceberg” for how broadly the tech could apply.

  • Varda flies as a SpaceX secondary payload, recovers capsules in Australia, and expects to launch United Therapeutics’ first samples as early as next year.

Why it matters: Government-backed experiments on the ISS have explored space pharma for decades, but no drug manufactured in orbit has ever been returned to Earth and sold. Redwire is still running NASA-funded ISS investigations; Varda has its own reentry capsules and is now attempting to close the loop commercially, at scale.

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ANDURIL

Image source: U.S. Air Force (Anduril’s Fury drone)

The Rundown: Nine-year-old autonomous weapons maker Anduril closed a $5B Series H round at a $61B valuation — more than doubling its worth in under a year and becoming the darling of Silicon Valley's defense gold rush.

The details:

  • The round was led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, and comes just under a year after Anduril raised $2.5B at a $30.5B valuation.

  • CEO Brian Schimpf said the company doubled annual revenue to $2.2B in 2025 and nearly doubled its workforce.

  • In March, the U.S. Army awarded Anduril an up to 10-year contract with a ceiling of up to $20B, consolidating 120 to 130 existing orders in one.

  • The Pentagon also confirmed an agreement with Anduril and three other companies to purchase ~10 hypersonic missiles over the next three years.

Why it matters: Anduril is plowing new capital into manufacturing, R&D, and infrastructure, accelerating a model built on drones, counter-drone systems, hypersonic missiles, and AI battlefield software, rattling Lockheed and Boeing. With $11B raised, it’s the clear VC favorite — but rivals Shield AI and Helsing are closing fast.

META

Image source: Images 2.0 / The Rundown

The Rundown: Meta is rolling out neural handwriting to all Ray-Ban Display users and opening the glasses to third-party web developers, reports The Verge — moves that reframe the smart glasses as a full-fledged wearable computer.

The details:

  • Neural handwriting is graduating from early access to a full release, letting you text by tracing letters on any surface instead of pulling out your phone.

  • The feature is powered by Meta’s Neural Band wristband, which reads wrist signals to translate hand movements into text input.

  • Meta is also opening Ray-Ban Display to third-party developers, who can now build lightweight “Web Apps” for the glasses using standard web technologies.

  • Developers can adapt mobile experiences via Meta’s new wearables toolkit, bringing text, images, buttons, and video to the tiny display in the lenses.

Why it matters: Moving neural handwriting from demo to default makes Ray‑Ban Display more of a viable, always‑on interface for messaging and micro‑apps. By opening a developer path alongside that new input, Meta is nudging its smart glasses closer to the “everyday AR computer” it has been promising for years.

NASA

Image source: NASA/ Jim Ross

The Rundown: NASA released new details for Artemis III, sharing that it is no longer Moon-bound: a 2027 Earth-orbit rehearsal to test Orion, docking, and commercial landers before a planned Moon landing in 2028.

The details:

  • Earlier this year, NASA reframed the 2027 flight as a low-Earth-orbit rehearsal with four astronauts aboard Orion, rather than a crewed lunar landing.

  • Orion is now expected to rendezvous and dock with test versions of SpaceX’s Starship lander and/or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander.

  • Artemis III will fly with a structural “spacer” instead of the rocket’s upper stage, freeing NASA to reserve its remaining upper-stage hardware for Artemis IV.

  • NASA’s hedged language leaves open the possibility that astronauts won’t enter either lander at all, Ars Technica reports.

Why it matters: Artemis III is a trial run for the program’s weakest links — commercial landers that may not yet be crew-ready, docking choreography, and scarce SLS hardware. How robust that turns out to be will go a long way toward determining if Artemis becomes a sustainable lunar campaign or a fragile, delay-prone program.

QUICK HITS

Instagram has globally launched “Instants,” a BeReal-style feature for disappearing photos that automatically sends images the moment users tap the shutter button.

California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed a 7.25% sales tax on digital software and SaaS products starting January 2027 to generate $900M annually.

LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, is preparing to lay off about 5% of its roughly 17,500 employees worldwide as it reorganizes teams despite recent revenue growth.

YouTube said viewers now watch more than 2B hours of vertical Shorts on TVs each month.

Cisco is cutting nearly 4K jobs, or about 5% of its workforce, to shift more spending into AI infrastructure even as it reports record quarterly revenue.

Longevity influencer Bryan Johnson, who spends over $2M a year on anti-aging protocols, shared a list of 41 mostly simple, low-cost health “hacks” on X.

Uber will open two large campuses in India and partner with Adani Group on its first data center in the country to expand its product development, AI, and infrastructure.

An early-stage U.S. trial found that a highly personalized DNA-based vaccine for glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, is safe and triggers broad immune responses.

Blue Origin is reportedly considering taking on external investors for the first time to help fund a major ramp‑up in New Glenn launches and meet its ambitious flight targets.

COMMUNITY

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Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team

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