As Sequoia Capital’s first protection tech funding, Mach Industries is an business 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 couple 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 group member, Forbes first reported.
Chatting with 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 a scarcity of security assets.
“On the time, we had been making an attempt to self-fund it, and we didn’t have the cash to type of run these procedures the way in which they need to have been,” he mentioned.
After the explosion, Mach Industries “primarily shut down all work” till it raised funds from Sequoia Capital, Thornton mentioned. Now, with these assets secured, Thornton says Mach has a full security group and is working with the U.S. army to develop new weapons.
The startup has additionally pivoted away from its preliminary give attention to hydrogen, a gasoline that’s famously risky. Talking at StrictlyVC, Thornton mentioned hydrogen was “most likely a foul tech guess” that required additional growth. 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 known as “Glide” that may be fired from the sting of area. It additionally not too long ago landed a U.S. Military contract and introduced plans for a community of decentralized factories it calls “Forge.”
“Constructing numerous prototypes” is a key a part of why VCs have poured $85 million into the corporate, based on 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.