Mach Industries, the three-year-old protection tech startup run by 22-year-old founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, has raised a $300 million Sequence C at a $1.8 billion valuation, the corporate introduced on Monday.
The elevate almost quadruples the valuation of the corporate in a 12 months. In June 2025, Mach raised $100 million at a $470 million valuation. Different buyers embrace Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Khosla Ventures.
The spherical was led by deep tech fund Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital, identified for fintech and these days in scorching offers in every single place — from AI coding startups like Cognition to neoclouds like Crusoe.
Since constructing autonomous weapons is a capital-intensive trade, Thornton started actively fundraising a few months in the past, he advised TechCrunch, and rapidly found that the spherical could be widespread with buyers.
“We went out to lift 200 [million dollars] and we had been extraordinarily oversubscribed at 200 and proud of the value, so we determined to push as much as 300. We’re nonetheless oversubscribed on the 300 mark,” Thornton mentioned of the fundraising efforts.
Based in 2023, Mach and its progress have been a wild experience for Thornton, who famously dropped out of MIT at 19 to start out the corporate. VC enthusiasm is excessive for a number of causes. Aside from AI, protection tech is a scorching space for funding proper now as newfangled autonomous weapons and drone protection methods, show themselves in battle in Ukraine.
Mach has additionally turn out to be prolific in its brief time. The Huntington Seaside, California-based firm now has 5 autonomous automobiles in growth: Viper, a jet-powered vertical takeoff automobile; Glide, a high-altitude glider able to launching weapons; Stratos, an airborne surveillance platform; Dart, a low-cost counter-drone interceptor; and Pike, supposed for launching long-range munitions. Manufacturing is predicted to start subsequent 12 months on not less than three of those methods, the corporate says.
Plus, simply this week, it received a Division of Protection contract to create a brand new, sixth automobile that the startup has by no means mentioned publicly, Thornton tells TechCrunch. The contract is from the Protection Innovation Unit (DIU) to develop the Navy’s new “runway-independent strike plane,” because the startup describes it.
This can be for a really massive plane, Thornton says, that might have functions within the business trade, too.
It has additionally grown from a couple of dozen workers in its first 12 months to about 350 workers in the present day, has a 115,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Huntington Seaside, and design and manufacturing amenities in quite a few different places.
“So by the top of this 12 months, in 2026, we may have introduced on 4 new manufacturing amenities,” Thornton mentioned.
However another excuse VCs wrote large checks is that final month, Mach orchestrated an trade coup (excuse the pun) when it acquired strong rocket motor (SRM) startup Exquadrum in a $50 million cash-and-equity deal, as TechCrunch beforehand reported. It beat out upwards of eight different potential consumers, the startup mentioned.
There’s an acute scarcity of SRMs as drones create unprecedented demand in a market managed by two of the key prime protection contractors, Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman. The lead instances for buying can stretch years.
With this purchase, Mach controls its personal future for rocket motors and in addition launched a brand new business enterprise, Mach Energetics, to promote the engines. Whereas Thornton declined to share income, he mentioned the present combine is 50/50 between promoting to the federal government and promoting to different corporations.
Thornton remembers a second final 12 months when all of the quick progress of the corporate actually hit him. Two years in the past, the all-hands conferences had been held within the convention room with “like 12 folks,” he mentioned. “At our two-year celebration we had like 200 plus chairs and it was standing-room solely.”
Nonetheless, he mentioned, he’s most pleased with the pace of product growth. That’s, in spite of everything, your complete cause for his firm and for the protection tech trade. The concept with these startups, backed by tech VCs, is to deliver quicker, extra reasonably priced merchandise to the army and associated business makes use of, versus the costly, bespoke choices that legacy prime protection contractors provide.
“Historically, it’s 4 years to construct a jet engine. That’s in regards to the quickest yow will discover on this area. And we went from no crew to constructing a crew to a jet engine firing in about eight months,” Thornton mentioned.
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