As the first technology investment of Sequoia Capital, Machine It is a love of the industry, raising more than $ 80 million since its founding in 2023. Its founder, Ethan Thornton, now 21 years old, started Mach as a teenager MIT student before leaving to focus full time on his start.
But a few months before landing a Sequoia seed investment in the summer of 2023, Mach had a significant setback: an original hydrogen weapon built exploded, sending hundreds referenced.
Speaking to TechCrunch during his appearance at Strictlyvc in San Francisco on April 3, Thornton first addressed the incident, saying it was due to lack of security resources.
“At that time we were trying to prevent it and we didn’t have the money to run these processes as it should be,” he said.
After the explosion, Mach Industries “essentially closed all the work” until it raised chapters from Sequoia Capital, Thornton said. Now, with these resources secured, Thornton says Mach has a full security team and works with the US military to develop new weapons.
The start has also rotated from its initial catering on hydrogen, a gas that is famous volatile. Speaking to Strictlyvc, Thornton said hydrogen was “probably a bad technology bet” that required further development. But the axis does not have Fazed Mach – away from it.
Now, Mach makes different types of weapons completely, such as a new cruise projectile and a bomb called “glide” that can be fired from the edge of the space. A US Army contract recently landed and announced plans for a network of decentralized factories called “Forge”.
“Building many original” is a key part of why VCS has poured $ 85 million to the company, according to Thornton.
“It is not necessarily my ability to build these things, but more of our ability to really work with the federal government to obtain record programs built around them,” he noted.
