Sequoia-backed Mach Industries, the protection tech based by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, landed a contract with the U.S. Military and has plans for its first manufacturing facility, Thornton informed TechCrunch.
The manufacturing facility will probably be 115,000 sq. toes in Huntington Seaside, California, the place Mach’s headquarters is situated, CEO Thorton stated. Whereas that feels like an costly zip code for a weapons manufacturing facility, Southern California – within the shadow of SpaceX – has grow to be a hotspot for America’s burgeoning protection tech trade.
Mach can also be saying it was chosen by the Military Functions Laboratory to develop a vertical takeoff precision cruise missile it calls “Strategic Strike.” This was a developmental contract that was awarded within the third quarter of 2024.
Thornton tells TechCrunch he and the U.S. Military are saying this contract now as a result of the expertise efficiently met its preliminary flight assessments final month.
As for the manufacturing facility, that’s one other space the place protection tech firms like Mach, in addition to Anduril, try to innovate. Mach’s manufacturing facility, which it calls Forge 1, will probably be one in every of many “decentralized” factories the corporate plans to construct.
“Instead of very centralized factories, we will build many, many smaller factories to actually have a survival defense industrial base,” he defined. The factories will probably be designed to take uncooked supplies via ultimate meeting.
Along with different as-yet-to-be decided websites within the U.S., he additionally hopes to have worldwide places.
The Huntington manufacturing facility is already constructing each of the corporate’s essential merchandise, a weapon known as Glide and an excellent gentle jet-powered vertical takeoff and touchdown unmanned aerial automobile (UAV) known as Viper. Viper is understood for its utterly vertical takeoffs, requiring no runway, and Mach says it’s as much as 300 instances inexpensive to construct than conventional UAVs.
“Viper is manufacturable in that decentralized sort of web of factories, and that’s a huge deal. You don’t require specialty tooling to make it, which means that if the U.S. has to ramp up production, we won’t rely on these centralized locations,” he stated.
Glide is a bomb deployed from a balloon-like automobile positioned on the fringe of house. That is supposed to offer Glide extra vary (Mach claims it is going to have infinite vary to drop on targets wherever on Earth) and likewise make it tougher to shoot down.
Thornton says this primary manufacturing facility ought to in the future be capable to produce 1,000 Vipers and three,000 Glides a month.
Teen founder, $85M in funding
Mach Industries is a buzzy protection tech startup as a result of it was Sequoia’s first protection tech funding and likewise as a result of Thornton was a teen when he based the corporate.
He dropped out of MIT to work on Mach when he was simply 19 and shortly landed Sequoia’s Stephanie Zhan and Shaun Maguire as traders. They led Mach’s $5.7 million seed spherical introduced in June 2023. A couple of months later, in October, 2023, Geoff Lewis founding father of Bedrock Capital led Mach’s $79 million Collection A.
Whereas most of the protection tech trade’s founders are younger (Palmer Luckey was in his mid 20’s when he based Anduril) the impetus for this firm got here when Thornton was nonetheless in highschool.
“Back in high school, I ran a wood and metal workshop to actually bootstrap the company and start making initial products. And then probably the highest risk thing I did, I dropped out of MIT – before we had capital, or before I had a team,” he stated.
Mach has since grow to be one of many “it” firms in protection tech. As an example, it’s one of many handful of firms that famed former Palantir recruiter Peterson Conway works with. It now employs dozens.
