Mach Industries, the three-year-old protection tech startup run by way of 22-year-old founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, has raised a $300 million Collection C at a $1.8 billion valuation, the corporate introduced on Monday.
The carry just about quadruples the valuation of the corporate in a yr. In June 2025, Mach raised $100 million at a $470 million valuation. Different buyers come with Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Khosla Ventures.
The spherical was once led by way of deep-tech fund Endless Capital and Ribbit Capital, identified for fintech and in recent years in sizzling offers far and wide — from AI coding startups like Cognition to neoclouds like Crusoe.
Since development independent guns is a capital-intensive trade, Thornton started actively fundraising a few months in the past, he instructed TechCrunch, and briefly found out that the spherical can be well-liked by buyers.
“We went out to lift 200 [million dollars] and we had been extraordinarily oversubscribed at 200 and comfortable with the associated fee, 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, the expansion of Mach has been a wild journey for Thornton, who famously dropped out of MIT at 19 to start out the corporate. VC enthusiasm is excessive for a couple of causes. As opposed to AI, protection tech is a sizzling house for funding presently as newfangled independent guns and drone protection techniques, end up themselves in struggle in Ukraine.
Mach has additionally turn into prolific in its little while. The Huntington Seashore, California-based corporate now has 5 independent cars in building: Viper, a jet-powered vertical takeoff automobile; Go with the flow, a high-altitude glider able to launching guns; Stratos, an airborne surveillance platform; Dart, a cheap counter-drone interceptor; and Pike, supposed for launching long-range munitions. Manufacturing is predicted to start out subsequent yr on no less than 3 of those techniques, the corporate says.
Plus, simply this week, it received a Division of Protection contract to create a brand new, 6th automobile that the startup hasn’t ever mentioned publicly, Thornton tells TechCrunch. The contract is from the Protection Innovation Unit (DIU) to increase the Army’s new “runway-independent strike airplane,” because the startup describes it.
This can be for an excessively huge airplane, Thornton says, that can have programs within the business trade, too.
It has additionally grown from a couple of dozen workers in its first yr to about 350 workers lately, has a 115,000-square-foot production facility in Huntington Seashore, and design and manufacturing amenities in various different places.
“So by way of the top of this yr, in 2026, we can have introduced on 4 new manufacturing amenities,” Thornton mentioned.
However one more reason VCs wrote giant assessments is that ultimate month, Mach orchestrated an trade coup (excuse the pun) when it obtained forged rocket motor (SRM) startup Exquadrum in a $50 million cash-and-equity deal, as TechCrunch in the past reported. It beat out upwards of 8 different possible consumers, the startup mentioned.
There’s an acute scarcity of SRMs as drones create remarkable call for in a marketplace managed by way of two of the most important high protection contractors, Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman. The lead instances for getting can stretch years.
With this purchase, Mach controls its personal future for rocket motors and in addition introduced a brand new business industry, Mach Energetics, to promote the engines. Whilst Thornton declined to proportion earnings, he mentioned the present combine is 50/50 between promoting to the federal government and promoting to different corporations.
Thornton recalls a second ultimate yr when the entire rapid enlargement of the corporate truly hit him. Two years in the past, the all-hands conferences had been held within the convention room with “like 12 other folks,” he mentioned. “At our two-year birthday celebration we had like 200 plus chairs and it was once standing-room most effective.”
Nonetheless, he mentioned, he’s maximum pleased with the rate of product building. This is, in spite of everything, all the reason why for his corporate and for the protection tech trade. The theory with those startups, subsidized by way of tech VCs, is to deliver quicker, extra inexpensive merchandise to the army and comparable business makes use of, versus the pricy, bespoke choices that legacy high protection contractors be offering.
“Historically, it’s 4 years to construct a jet engine. That’s in regards to the quickest you’ll in finding on this area. And we went from no staff to development a staff to a jet engine firing in about 8 months,” Thornton mentioned.
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