Mach Industries, a three-year-old defense technology startup run by 22-year-old founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, announced Monday that it has raised $300 million in Series C funding at a $1.8 billion valuation.
The raise nearly quadrupled the company’s value in one year. In June 2025, Mach raised $100 million at a valuation of $470 million. Other investors include Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Khosla Ventures.
The round was led by deeptech funds Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital, which are known for fintech and have recently been making hot deals around the world, from AI coding startups like Cognition to neoclouds like Crusoe.
Because autonomous weapons manufacturing is a capital-intensive industry, Thornton began actively raising funds several months ago and quickly learned this round would be popular with investors, he told TechCrunch.
“We went out to raise 200 ($1 million) and we were so oversubscribed at 200 that we were happy with the price so we decided to raise it to 300. We’re still oversubscribed at 300,” Thornton said of the fundraising effort.
Founded in 2023, Mach’s growth has been a bumpy ride for Thornton, who famously dropped out of MIT at age 19 to start the company. VC enthusiasm is high for several reasons. In addition to AI, defense technology is currently a hot area for investment, with the latest autonomous weapons and drone defense systems proven in combat in Ukraine.
Maha also became prolific in a short period of time. The Huntington Beach, California-based company currently has five self-driving vehicles in development. Viper, a jet-powered vertical takeoff and landing vehicle; Glide, a high-altitude glider capable of firing weapons; Stratos, an aerial surveillance platform; Dart, a low-cost anti-drone interceptor; There is also a Pike for firing long-range ammunition. The company said it expects production on at least three of these systems to begin next year.
Additionally, this week the startup received a Department of Defense contract to build a new sixth vehicle, which it has never discussed publicly, Thornton tells TechCrunch. The contract is with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to develop the Navy’s new “runway-independent attack aircraft,” as the startup describes it.
This is intended for very large aircraft that could also have applications in commercial industry, Thornton said.
The company has also grown from about a dozen employees in its first year to about 350 employees today and has a 115,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Huntington Beach and design and production facilities in several other locations.
“So by the end of this year, 2026, we will have four new production facilities operating,” Thornton said.
But another reason why VCs wrote big checks is because Mach orchestrated an industry coup last month when it acquired solid rocket motor (SRM) startup Exquadrum in a $50 million cash-and-equity deal, as TechCrunch previously reported. The startup said it beat eight other potential buyers.
As drones have created unprecedented demand in markets controlled by major defense contractors Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman, there has been an acute shortage of SRMs. Purchase lead times can take years.
With this acquisition, Mach takes control of its own destiny for rocket motors and starts a new commercial business, Mach Energetics, to sell the engines. Thornton declined to share profits but said the current mix is 50/50 between selling to the government and selling to other companies.
Thornton remembers the moment last year when the company’s rapid growth hit him. He said that just two years ago, “about a dozen people” would gather in a conference room and hold a general meeting. “The party we held for two years had over 200 chairs and was standing room only.”
Still, he said he’s most proud of the speed of product development. After all, that’s what his company and the defense technology industry are all about. The idea of these tech VC-backed startups is to deliver faster, cheaper products for military and related commercial applications, as opposed to the expensive, custom products offered by established major defense contractors.
“Traditionally, it takes four years to build a jet engine. That’s the fastest timeframe you can find in this field. And we built a team that launched a jet engine in about eight months without putting a team together,” Thornton said.
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