Mach Industries startup valued at $3.7 billion — Fortune
In the United States, defense technology startup Mach Industries has raised $600 million as part of an extension of its Series C round at a valuation of $3.7 billion. The company, which develops autonomous defense systems, was founded in 2023 by Ethan Thornton, then 19 and now 22, Fortune reports.
Valuation more than doubled
Mach Industries’ new valuation is more than double the $1.8 billion at which the company was valued three months earlier. At that time, the startup raised an initial $300 million in a Series C round led by Ribbit Capital, Infinite Capital, Bedrock Capital, and Sequoia Capital.
In June 2023, Sequoia Capital led a $5.7 million investment round in Mach. According to Fortune, it was the fund’s first investment in a company working on hardware defense technologies.
Thornton grew up in a military family in Texas and became interested in the defense sector while still a teenager. He studied aerospace engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked with Lincoln Laboratory, but before completing his first year, he received a Thiel Fellowship and left the university to focus on the company.
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Transition to manufacturing
Mach Industries has six weapons development programs, a headquarters, and a 115,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Huntington Beach, California. The company aims to manufacture air vehicle bodies, jet engines, solid rocket motors, energetic materials systems, and autonomous technologies.
In 2024, Mach signed an agreement with the Army Applications Laboratory to develop a high-precision vertical-takeoff cruise missile. After several years of technology development and testing, the company is shifting its focus to manufacturing. Thornton told Fortune that private capital makes it possible to build and test developments earlier, as well as to develop the product and manufacturing capacity in parallel.
According to the publication, a record $19.8 billion was invested in the defense technology sector in the first quarter of 2026.
