Mach Industries, the three-year-old defense technology startup led by 22-year-old founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, has raised a $300 million Series C at a $1.8 billion valuation, the company announced Monday.
The increase nearly quadruples the company’s valuation in a year. In June 2025, Mach raised $100 million at a $470 million valuation. Other investors include Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures.
The round was led by tech funds Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital, known for fintech and recently hot deals everywhere — from AI coding startups like Cognition to neoclouds like Crusoe.
Since making autonomous weapons is a capital-intensive industry, Thornton actively began fundraising a few months ago, he told TechCrunch, and quickly found the round would be popular with investors.
“We went out to raise 200 [million dollars] and we were extremely oversubscribed at 200 and happy with the price, so we decided to push up to 300. We’re still oversubscribed at the 300 mark,” Thornton said of the fundraising efforts.
Founded in 2023, Mach and its growth have been an incredible ride for Thornton, who famously skipped MIT at 19 to start the company. VC enthusiasm is high for a few reasons. In addition to artificial intelligence, defense technology is a hot area for investment right now, as new autonomous weapons and drone defense systems are proving themselves in combat in Ukraine.
Mach also became productive in the short time. The Huntington Beach, Calif.-based company now has five autonomous vehicles under development: the Viper, a jet-powered vertical takeoff vehicle; Glide, a high-altitude glider capable of launching weapons. Stratos, an airborne surveillance platform. Dart, a low-cost anti-drone interceptor. and Pike, intended for launching long-range munitions. Production is expected to begin next year on at least three of these systems, the company says.
Additionally, just this week, it won a contract with the Department of Defense to build a new, sixth vehicle that the startup has never publicly discussed, Thornton tells TechCrunch. The contract is from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to develop the Navy’s new “independent runway strike aircraft,” as the startup describes it.
This will be for a very large aircraft, says Thornton, which could also have applications in the commercial industry.
It has also grown from about a dozen employees in its first year of operation to about 350 employees today, has a 115,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Huntington Beach, and design and manufacturing facilities in a number of other locations.
“So by the end of this year, in 2026, we will have built four new production facilities,” Thornton said.
But another reason VCs have been writing big checks is that last month, Mach orchestrated an industry coup (pardon the pun) when it acquired solid rocket motor (SRM) startup Exquadrum in a $50 million cash and stock deal, as TechCrunch previously reported. He beat out more than eight other potential buyers, the startup said.
There is an acute shortage of SRM as drones create unprecedented demand in a market controlled by two of the major defense contractors, Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman. Delivery times for the market can be extended for years.
With this purchase, Mach controls its rocket engine destiny and also launched a new commercial venture, Mach Energetics, to sell the engines. While Thornton declined to share revenue, she said the current mix is 50/50 between sales to the government and sales to other companies.
Thornton recalls a moment last year when all of the company’s rapid growth really hit him. Two years ago, all-hands meetings were held in the conference room with “like 12 people,” he said. “At our two year party we had over 200 chairs and it was standing room only.”
However, he said, he is most proud of the speed of product development. That is, after all, what his company and the defense technology industry are all about. The idea with these tech VC-backed startups is to bring faster, more affordable products to the military and related commercial uses, as opposed to the expensive, customized offerings offered by legacy prime defense contractors.
“Traditionally, it takes four years to build a jet engine. This is the fastest you can find in that time. And we went from no team to building a jet engine that fires in about eight months,” Thornton said.
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