Defense tech darling Mach Industries hits $1.8B valuation, a 4x year-over-year jump

Mach Industries, the three-year-old defense company started by 22-year-old founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, has raised a $300 million Series C at a valuation of $1.8 billion, the company announced Monday.

The increase nearly quadrupled the company’s annual turnover. 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 deep technology fund Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital, known for fintech and recently for hot deals everywhere – from AI coding startups like Cognition to neoclouds like Crusoe.

Since building private weapons is a lucrative industry, Thornton started raising money a few months ago, he told TechCrunch, and quickly learned that this round would be popular with investors.

“We went out to gather 200 people [million dollars] and we had over 200 subscribers and were happy with the price, so we decided to go up to 300. We are still oversubscribed at the 300 mark,” Thornton said of the fundraising efforts.

Founded in 2023, Mach and its growth have been a wild ride for Thornton, who dropped out of MIT at age 19 to start the company. VC enthusiasm is high for several reasons. Besides AI, defense technology is a hot investment area right now as new autonomous weapons and drone defense systems are proving themselves in the war in Ukraine.

Mach has also grown in his short time. The Huntington Beach, California-based company now has five autonomous vehicles in development: the Viper, a vertical jet-powered vehicle; Glide, an advanced weapon-launching aircraft; Stratos, an airborne surveillance platform; Dart, an inexpensive counter-drone interceptor; and the Pike, which is intended to launch long-range weapons. Production is expected to begin next year on at least three of these systems, the company said.

And, just this week, it won a Department of Defense contract to create a new vehicle, the sixth that the startup hasn’t discussed publicly, Thornton tells TechCrunch. The contract comes from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to develop a new “independent aircraft for the Navy”, as the launcher explains.

This would be for a very large aircraft, Thornton said, which could have applications in the commercial industry, too.

It has also grown from about a dozen employees in its first year to about 350 employees today, with a 115,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Huntington Beach, as well as design and manufacturing facilities in several other locations.

So by the end of this year, in 2026, we will have delivered four new production facilities,” said Thornton.

But another reason why VCs are writing big checks is that last month, Mach planned a coup (pardon the pun) when it acquired rocket motor (SRM) startup Exquadrum in a $50 million cash and equity deal, as TechCrunch previously reported. It beat out about eight other potential buyers, the startups said.

There is a major shortage of SRMs as drones create unprecedented demand in a market dominated by two major defense contractors, Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman. The first purchase times may last for years.

With this purchase, Mach controls the future of its rocket motors and also launches a new commercial entity, Mach Energetics, to sell the motors. While Thornton declined to share revenue, he said the current mix is ​​50/50 between selling to the government and selling to other companies.

Thornton remembers a moment last year when all of the company’s rapid growth really hit him. Two years ago, all-hands meetings were held in a conference room with “like 12 people,” he said. “At our two-year anniversary party we had over 200 seats and it was standing room only.”

Still, he said, he is most proud of the speed of product development. Which is, after all, the whole reason for his company and the defense industry. The idea behind these startups, backed by tech VCs, is to deliver fast, affordable products for military and related commercial use, as opposed to the expensive, bespoke offerings offered by leading defense contractors.

“Traditionally, it’s four years to build a jet engine. That’s about the fastest you can get in this space. And we went from out of a team building a team to a jet engine firing in about eight months,” Thornton said.