Business
Startup Varda Space Industries snags former Mattel plant in El Segundo
In an expansion of its business of processing pharmaceuticals in Earth’s orbit, Varda Space Industries is renting a large El Segundo plant where toy manufacturer Mattel used to design Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls.
The plant in El Segundo’s aerospace corridor will be an extension of Varda Space Industries’ headquarters in a much smaller building on nearby Aviation Boulevard.
Varda will occupy a 205,443-square-foot industrial and office campus at 2031 E. Mariposa Ave., which will give it additional capacity to manufacture spacecraft at scale, the company said.
Originally built in the 1940s as an aircraft facility, the complex has a history as part of aerospace and defense industries that have long shaped the South Bay and is near a host of major defense and space contractors. It is also close to Los Angeles Air Force Base, headquarters to the Space Systems Command.
Workers test AstroForge’s Odin asteroid probe, which was lost in space after launch this year.
(Varda Space Industries)
Varda is one of a new generation of aerospace startups that have flourished in Southern California and the South Bay over the last several years, particularly in El Segundo, often with ties to SpaceX.
Elon Musk’s company, founded in 2002 in El Segundo, has revolutionized the industry with reusable rockets that have radically lowered the cost of lifting payloads into space. Though it has moved its headquarters to Texas, SpaceX retains large-scale operations in Hawthorne.
Varda co-founder and Chief Executive Will Bruey is a former SpaceX avionics engineer, and the company’s spacecraft are launched on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Varda makes automated labs that look like cylindrical desktop speakers, which it sends into orbit in capsules and satellite platforms it also builds. There, in microgravity, the miniature labs grow molecular crystals that are purer than those produced in Earth’s gravity for use in pharmaceuticals.
It has contracts with drug companies and also the military, which tests technology at hypersonic speeds as the capsules return to Earth.
Its fifth capsule was launched in November and returned to Earth in late January; its next mission is set in the coming weeks. Varda has more than 10 missions scheduled on Falcon 9s through 2028.
For the last several decades, the Mariposa Avenue property served as the research and development center for Mattel Toys. El Segundo has also long been a center for the toy industry as companies like to set up shop in the shadow of Mattel.
The Mattel facility “has always been an exceptional property with a legacy tied to aerospace innovation, and leasing to Varda Space Industries feels like a natural continuation of that story,” said Michael Woods, a partner at GPI Cos., which owns the property.
“We are proud to support a company that is genuinely pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and are excited to watch Varda grow and thrive here in El Segundo,” Woods said.
As one of the country’s most active hubs of aerospace and defense innovation, El Segundo has seen its industrial property vacancy fall to 3.4% on demand from space companies, government contractors and technology startups, real estate brokerage CBRE said.
Successful startups often have to leave the neighborhood when they want to expand, real estate broker Bob Haley of CBRE said. The 9-acre Mattel facility was big enough to keep Varda in the city.
Last year, Varda subleased about 55,000 square feet of lab space from alternative protein company Beyond Meat at 888 Douglas St. in El Segundo, which it started moving into in June.
Varda will get the keys to its new building in December and spend four to eight months building production and assembly facilities as it ramps up operations. By the end of next year, it expects to have constructed 10 more spacecraft.
In the future, Varda could consolidate offices there, given its size. Currently, though, the plan is to retain all properties, creating a campus of three buildings within a mile of one another that are served by the company’s transportation services, Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Barr said.
“We already have Varda-branded shuttles running up and down Aviation Boulevard,” he said.
Primm Valley Resorts, the last full-time casino among a cluster of three off Interstate 15 in Primm, at the California-Nevada border, is permanently closing, according to a termination notice sent to employees on Tuesday.
The letter, posted by Las Vegas insider publication Las Vegas Locally, noted that employees who worked at Primm Valley would be let go by July 4. It’s not known if the casino will close that day or before.
An email to Primm Valley Resorts owner Affinity Gaming was not immediately returned.
Primm Valley was the last of three operating casino resorts in Primm, formerly known as State Line. The castle-shaped Whiskey Pete’s opened in 1977, followed by Primm Valley in 1990 and Buffalo Bill’s in 1994.
In a letter to the Clark County Board of Commissioners, Erin Barnett, Affinity’s vice president and general counsel, wrote in October 2024 that “traffic at the state line has proved to be heavily weighted towards weekend activity and is insufficient to support three full-time casino properties.”
Along with Primm Valley Resorts, Primadonna Co. LLC, owned by Affinity Gaming, is closing the Primm Center gas station and the Flying J truck stop located at Whiskey Pete’s; that casino closed in December 2024.
The termination notice comes nearly a year after Affinity Gaming ended 24/7 operations at Buffalo Bill’s Resort on July 6. The casino opened on days in which its concert venue, the Star of the Desert Arena, hosted special events.
Lights glow on the Buffalo Bill’s Resort and Casino sign on July 6, 2025, in Primm, Nev.
(Bridget Bennett / For The Times)
It’s unclear what happens to music and magic acts booked until July 25.
It’s not known how long other Affinity-owned properties in the area, such as the popular Lotto Store on the California side of the border, will continue to operate. Nevadans have been known to drive for several miles and wait in long lines to buy Powerball tickets, particularly when jackpots creep into 10 figures.
The notice informed employees “this action is expected to result in the permanent termination of employment for all employees at these locations.”
As late as September, Primm Valley Resorts emailed media members promoting renovated rooms and signature experiences at its final resort.
Primm once shined as one of Nevada’s more popular gambling resorts. The three-casino complex served as a less expensive, less flashy, slightly more kitschy alternative to Las Vegas that benefited from being a good 45 minutes closer to Los Angeles than Sin City.
Several factors have contributed to Primm’s slow decline, including the COVID pandemic and increased competition from casinos popping up on tribal lands in California.
Those newer casinos are easier to get to than Primm from key Southern California population centers, reducing the value proposition.
An actress accused the director James Cameron of stealing her likeness to create an “Avatar” character in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in California — a case that reflects a core fear among Hollywood performers in the artificial intelligence age: losing control of their own faces.
The actress, Q’orianka Kilcher, also sued Disney, which controls the multibillion-dollar “Avatar” franchise, which started in 2009.
“In the age of A.I., our likeness is no longer safe,” Ms. Kilcher, 36, said in an interview. “While what happened to me is personal, it’s also a big warning that, if we don’t act now, this type of thing will become standard. This case is about the future of identity.”
The lawsuit involves Neytiri, the digitally created, blue-skinned warrior princess in Mr. Cameron’s three “Avatar” blockbusters. According to the complaint, Mr. Cameron used a photo of Ms. Kilcher as a teenager — without her knowledge — as the foundation for Neytiri, incorporating her features “directly into his production art” and digital production pipeline.
“Neytiri’s lips, chin, jawline and overall mouth shape” in the trilogy “are Q’orianka Kilcher’s,” the complaint said. “This was not a fleeting inspiration or a vague homage; it was a literal transplant of a real teenager’s facial structure.”
In 2010, Ms. Kilcher, who is also an Indigenous rights activist, met Mr. Cameron by chance at a charity event in Hollywood, where he told her that she was the “early inspiration” for Neytiri’s look, according to the complaint. “She did not take this to mean that her actual face had been replicated,” the complaint said.
Ms. Kilcher is suing now, the complaint said, because of an interview that Mr. Cameron gave to a French media outlet in 2024. In the interview, Mr. Cameron mentions Ms. Kilcher and “points to an image of Neytiri and says unambiguously: ‘This is actually her lower face,’” the complaint said. The interview came to her attention a year later.
“For the first time in a public forum, Cameron explicitly admitted the full truth about Neytiri’s design,” according to the complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. “One of Hollywood’s most powerful filmmakers exploited a young Indigenous girl’s biometric identity and cultural heritage to create a record-breaking film franchise, without credit or compensation to her.”
A lawyer for Mr. Cameron did not respond to a request for comment. Disney had no immediate comment.
Ms. Kilcher’s action is the latest in a large number of legal attacks on “Avatar” over the years — almost all of them resolved by courts in Mr. Cameron’s favor, including five separate lawsuits accusing him of copyright infringement or the stealing of ideas. A sixth infringement lawsuit is ongoing and was expanded last month.
In part, Ms. Kilcher is suing under California’s decades-old “right of publicity” statute, which allows people to bring claims against unauthorized use of their identities. It’s a complex area of the law that has taken on a new immediacy in the age of generative A.I., an emerging technology that allows anyone with an internet connection to easily create images that replicate existing art, photographs and human likenesses.
Generally speaking, right-of-publicity laws (about 25 states have one) balance First Amendment protections by distinguishing between commercial exploitation (using a likeness to sell a product) and expressive works (such as news, art, parody). But “there is not always a bright line,” said Jennifer E. Rothman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School who is viewed as a leading authority on right-to-privacy law.
Ms. Kilcher’s break in Hollywood came in 2005 when, as a 14-year-old, she was cast as Pocahontas in Terrence Malick’s “The New World.” She has since acted in films like “Dog” and TV shows like “Yellowstone,” and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Ms. Kilcher is asking for damages that include “all profits” attributable to the unauthorized use, including from the sale of “Avatar” tickets; the three “Avatar” films have collected $1.8 billion at the North American box office alone.
“The damages we are asking for are commensurate with the exploitation,” Arnold P. Peter, one of Ms. Kilcher’s lawyers, said in an interview.
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said it’s slashing roughly 14% of its workforce, or about 700 workers, partly because artificial intelligence is reshaping the way people work.
“The biggest risk now is not taking action. We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native,” Coinbase Chief Executive and co-founder Brian Armstrong said in a Tuesday email to employees.
The email, which was posted on social media, said engineers with the help of AI are completing work in days rather than weeks. As more tasks get automated, that’s made it possible for the company to lean on smaller teams.
The company also cited other factors contributing to the job losses, including the volatility of the cryptocurrency business.
Founded in San Francisco, Coinbase is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States. Millions of people use its platform to buy, sell, transfer and store cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin.
Coinbase is among tech companies that have been laying off workers and pointing to how AI is making workers more productive. Although some experts say the role AI has been playing is overblown, advancements in technology have also made it possible to generate code and automate other tasks. Companies are also spending more on artificial intelligence, some building new AI-powered gadgets or building out new data centers.
This year, companies such as Block, Meta, Oracle and more have announced they’re slashing thousands of workers. From January to March, tech companies have announced 52,050 layoffs, up 40% from the same period last year, according to outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Coinbase is also changing how it operates, Armstrong told employees. It’s reducing management layers and some leaders will oversee 15 workers or more, his email said. Managers will operate like “player-coaches” and it’s experimenting with “one person teams” in which the role of an engineer, designer and product manager are part of one position.
“AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we’re reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era,” Armstrong told employees. “This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.”
Coinbase largely makes money from cryptocurrency transaction fees, but trading activity has slowed. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the company reported total revenue of roughly $1.8 billion, missing analysts’ expectations. The company posted a net loss of $667 million during that quarter, which it partly attributed to losses in certain strategic investments.
As of December, Coinbase had more than 4,900 employees, according to its website. Although the company leased office space in San Francisco, it has allowed employees to work remotely and doesn’t have a physical headquarters.
Coinbase’s share price fell more than 2% on Tuesday to $197.75.
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