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 increase almost quadruples the valuation of the corporate in a yr. In June 2025, Mach raised $100 million at a $470 million valuation. It has now raised about $485 million whole from traders, together with 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 sizzling offers in all places — from AI coding startups like Cognition to neoclouds like Crusoe.
Since constructing autonomous weapons is a capital-intensive business, Thornton started actively fundraising a few months in the past, he informed TechCrunch, and shortly found that the spherical could be in style with traders.
“We went out to boost 200 [million dollars] and we have been extraordinarily oversubscribed at 200 and proud of the worth, so we determined to push as much as 300. We’re nonetheless oversubscribed on the 300 mark,” Thornton stated of the fundraising efforts.
Based in 2023, the expansion of Mach has been a wild journey for Thornton, who famously dropped out of MIT at 19 to begin the corporate. VC enthusiasm is excessive for a couple of causes. Aside from AI, protection tech is a sizzling space for funding proper now as newfangled autonomous weapons and drone protection programs, show themselves in battle in Ukraine.
Mach has additionally turn into prolific in its brief time. The Huntington Seaside, California-based firm now has 5 autonomous autos in improvement: 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 anticipated to start subsequent yr on no less than three of those programs, 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 might be for a really giant plane, Thornton says, that would have functions within the business business, too.
It has additionally grown from a few dozen workers in its first yr to about 350 workers right this moment, has a 115,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Huntington Seaside, and design and manufacturing amenities in a lot of different areas.
“So by the tip of this yr, in 2026, we can have introduced on 4 new manufacturing amenities,” Thornton stated.
However another excuse VCs wrote huge checks is that final month, Mach orchestrated an business coup (excuse the pun) when it acquired strong rocket motor (SRM) startup Exquadrum in a $50 million cash-and-equity deal, as TechCrunch previously reported. It beat out upwards of eight different potential patrons, the startup stated.
There’s an acute scarcity of SRMs as drones create unprecedented demand in a market managed by two of the foremost 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 stated the present combine is 50/50 between promoting to the federal government and promoting to different firms.
Thornton remembers a second final yr when all of the quick development of the corporate actually hit him. Two years in the past, the all-hands conferences have been held within the convention room with “like 12 folks,” he stated. “At our two-year get together we had like 200 plus chairs and it was standing-room solely.”
Nonetheless, he stated, he’s most happy with the velocity of product improvement. That’s, in any case, your entire motive for his firm and for the protection tech business. The thought with these startups, backed by tech VCs, is to convey sooner, extra inexpensive 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 you’ll find on this area. And we went from no staff to constructing a staff to a jet engine firing in about eight months,” Thornton stated.
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