Outlier Space, an Auckland-founded microgravity startup, has raised NZ$10.5 million (US$7.35 million) in one of New Zealand's largest-ever pre-seed rounds to build a reusable satellite capsule that carries payloads into orbit and returns them safely to the ground.

The round was led by GD1, with Nova Threshold, Airtree, Icehouse Ventures, Investible, Side Stage Ventures and angel investor Brian Cartmell also participating.

Founder and chief executive Jamie France is a Rocket Lab alum and describes the product as an "anti-gravity chamber" that operates on a customer's behalf. In microgravity, the near-weightless condition found 160 kilometres up in space, molecules that separate by weight on Earth stay evenly distributed. This means you can produce drug compounds and crystal structures that can't be made under gravity. The company says the payoff can be reformulating a drug that once required a four-hour intravenous drip in hospital into a simple injection.

Getting to orbit is no longer the hard part, as launch costs have fallen and rockets are plentiful; the bottleneck is now re-entry. Compounding the demand is the decommissioning of the International Space Station, where three decades of microgravity research has been done.

Outlier's closest analog, California's Varda Space Industries, is vertically integrated and makes drugs for itself. The funds go toward capsule testing, regulatory approvals, and pre-selling its first missions.