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As Sequoia Capital ’s first defense tech investment , Mach Industriesis an manufacture darling , raising over $ 80 millionsince its founding in 2023 . Its beginner , Ethan Thornton , now 21 , begin Mach as a teenage MIT scholarly person beforedropping out to focus full - clock time on his inauguration .
But a few months before landing a seed investment from Sequoia in the summer of 2023 , Mach had a major setback : a H grease-gun epitome it was build up exploded , transport hundred of pieces of shrapnel fell and injuring a squad member , Forbes firstreported .
mouth to TechCrunchduring his appearance at StrictlyVC in San Franciscoon April 3 , Thornton addressed the incident in public for the first time , saying it occur due to a lack of rubber resource .
“ At the sentence , we were trying to self - fund it , and we did n’t have the money to sort of pass these procedures the way they should have been , ” he suppose .
After the explosion , Mach Industries “ essentially close down all employment ” until it raised funds from Sequoia Capital , Thornton said . Now , with those resources secured , Thornton say Mach has a full base hit team and is lick with the U.S. military to develop new weapons .
The inauguration has also pivoted by from its initial focus on hydrogen , a gas that ’s famously volatile . address at StrictlyVC , Thornton read H was “ probably a unsound tech stakes ” that involve further maturation . But the pivot has n’t fazed Mach — far from it .
Now , Mach is building different kinds of weapons totally , such as a new sail projectile and a dud called “ Glide ” that can be fired from the edge of space . It alsorecently down a U.S. Army contract and announced plansfor a connection of decentralized mill it calls “ Forge . ”
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“ construct a luck of epitome ” is a key part of why VCs have pelt $ 85 million into the ship’s company , according to Thornton .
“ It ’s not necessarily my power to build up these things , but more so our ability to really work with the Union government to get programs of platter built around them , ” he remarked .
