Outlier Space is literally trying to defy gravity — and just raised $10.5m to do it
The Auckland deep tech startup has big backing for its plan to produce a reusable satelitte capsule to carry pharmaceutical, biotech and advanced materials into orbit — and back again.
There’s no escaping gravity — you either leave the planet, or you don’t get molecules and materials that can only form in its absence.
“There’s no AI solution for this,” said Jamie France, founder and chief executive of Outlier Space, the Auckland-founded microgravity startup that’s just raised $10.5 million from a bevy of high-profile Australian and NZ VC funds. The company wants to build a reusable satellite capsule designed to carry pharmaceutical, biotech and advanced materials payloads into microgravity — the the near-weightless condition experienced in low orbit, about 160 kilometres above the earth's surface — before returning them safely to the ground.
Molecules that separate by weight on earth stay evenly distributed in microgravity, producing drug compounds and crystal structures that are otherwise impossible to make.
“It can lead you to a drug that previously was an intravenous drip that you had to sit on in a hospital for four hours, and now it can be an injection,” France said.
