As Sequoia Capital’s first protection tech funding, Mach Industries is an trade darling, elevating over $80 million since its founding in 2023. Its founder, Ethan Thornton, now 21, started Mach as a teenage MIT scholar earlier than dropping out to focus full-time on his startup.
However a number of months earlier than touchdown a seed funding from Sequoia in the summertime of 2023, Mach had a significant setback: a hydrogen gun prototype it was constructing exploded, sending tons of of items of shrapnel flying and injuring a staff member, Forbes first reported.
Talking to TechCrunch throughout his look at StrictlyVC in San Francisco on April 3, Thornton addressed the incident publicly for the primary time, saying it occurred on account of an absence of security assets.
“On the time, we have been attempting to self-fund it, and we didn’t have the cash to kind of run these procedures the best way they need to have been,” he stated.
After the explosion, Mach Industries “primarily shut down all work” till it raised funds from Sequoia Capital, Thornton stated. Now, with these assets secured, Thornton says Mach has a full security staff and is working with the U.S. army to develop new weapons.
The startup has additionally pivoted away from its preliminary concentrate on hydrogen, a fuel that’s famously risky. Talking at StrictlyVC, Thornton stated hydrogen was “in all probability a nasty tech wager” that required additional growth. However the pivot hasn’t fazed Mach — removed from it.
Now, Mach is constructing completely different sorts of weapons altogether, equivalent to a brand new cruise missile and a bomb referred to as “Glide” that may be fired from the sting of house. It additionally lately landed a U.S. Military contract and introduced plans for a community of decentralized factories it calls “Forge.”
“Constructing a number of prototypes” is a key a part of why VCs have poured $85 million into the corporate, in accordance with Thornton.
“It’s not essentially my skill to construct these items, however extra so our skill to truly work with the federal authorities to get packages of document constructed round them,” he remarked.
