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 pupil earlier than dropping out to focus full-time on his startup.
However just a few months earlier than touchdown a seed funding from Sequoia in the summertime of 2023, Mach had a serious setback: a hydrogen gun prototype it was constructing exploded, sending a whole lot of items of shrapnel flying and injuring a group 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 as a consequence of an absence of security sources.
“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 way in which 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 sources secured, Thornton says Mach has a full security group and is working with the U.S. navy to develop new weapons.
The startup has additionally pivoted away from its preliminary deal with hydrogen, a gasoline that’s famously risky. Talking at StrictlyVC, Thornton stated hydrogen was “most likely a foul tech guess” that required additional improvement. However the pivot hasn’t fazed Mach — removed from it.
Now, Mach is constructing completely different sorts of weapons altogether, resembling a brand new cruise missile and a bomb referred to as “Glide” that may be fired from the sting of area. It additionally just lately landed a U.S. Military contract and introduced plans for a community of decentralized factories it calls “Forge.”
“Constructing plenty of prototypes” is a key a part of why VCs have poured $85 million into the corporate, in line with Thornton.
“It’s not essentially my means to construct this stuff, however extra so our means to truly work with the federal authorities to get applications of file constructed round them,” he remarked.
