As Sequoia Capital’s first defence technology investment, Mach Industries has raised more than $80 million since its establishment in 2023. Founder Ethan Thornton (now 21) began Mach as a teenage MIT student before focusing on startups full time.
However, a few months before landing a seed investment from Sequoia in the summer of 2023, Mach had a major setback. The explosive hydrogen gun prototype exploded, flying hundreds of ra pieces and injured team members, Forbes reported.
When speaking to TechCrunch while appearing on StrictlyVC in San Francisco on April 3, Thornton made his first public speech about the incident, saying it happened due to a lack of safety resources.
“At the time we were trying to self-fund it. We didn’t have the money to carry out these steps the way we should have,” he said.
After the explosion, the Mach Industry “essentially stopped all work” until it raised funds from the Sequoia capital, Thornton said. With these resources now in place, Thornton says Mach has a full safety team and is working with the US military to develop new weapons.
The startup is also circling away from its initial focus on hydrogen, a well-known volatile gas. Speaking on StrictlyVC, Thornton said hydrogen is a “probably a bad technical bet” and needs further development. But the pivots aren’t driving Mach crazy.
Now, Mach is fully constructing a variety of weapons, including new cruise missiles and bombs called “glides” that can be fired from the edge of space. He also recently signed a US Army contract and announced plans for a network of distributed factories known as “Forge.”
According to Thornton, “building a lot of prototypes” is a key part of why the VC poured $85 million into the company.
“It’s not necessarily my ability to build these things, but more often it’s the ability to actually work with the federal government and build a program of records around them,” he said.
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