Mach Industries doubles valuation to $3.7bn with $600m funding extension

Rapid scale-up

Defence tech startup Mach Industries has raised $600 million in a new funding round that doubles its valuation to $3.7 billion in just three months, as venture capital continues to flood into the military hardware sector.

The investment, announced on Thursday, is an extension of a Series C round closed in June, which valued the company at $1.8 billion. The massive injection of capital is backed by the same heavyweights that funded the initial tranche, including Sequoia, Ribbit Capital, Bedrock Capital, and Infinite Capital.

Mach, based in Huntington Beach, California, is building a fleet of low-cost, high-yield autonomous military vehicles and weapons. Unlike traditional defence contractors, the startup aims to manufacture at high volumes and lower costs by keeping its supply chain tightly integrated.

The company plans to use the new capital to scale its manufacturing capability. "This investment allows us to continue expanding that capacity while moving new platforms from development into production faster," founder and chief executive Ethan Thornton said.

Breaking production bottlenecks

Thornton, who is just 22 years old, dropped out of MIT at 19 to start the company. His early promise caught the eye of Sequoia partners Stephanie Zhan and Shaun Maguire, making Mach the venture capital firm’s first-ever investment in defence technology.

Mach operates a 115,000-square-foot manufacturing plant at its headquarters, alongside several other facilities in California. Its product line spans from Viper, a vertically launching turbojet drone built under a US Army contract, to Glide and Pike, which are designed for long-range strikes. It also makes Dart, a counter-drone aircraft designed to destroy targets by colliding with them, and Atlas, a ship-launched aircraft with a 1,400-nautical-mile range currently under development for the US Department of Defense.

Rather than relying on outside suppliers for critical components, Mach is aggressively building its own production capabilities. In May, the company spent $50 million in a cash-and-equity deal to acquire solid rocket motor startup Exquadrum. This acquisition resolved a major bottleneck in rocket motors, which are currently dominated by a pair of massive defence incumbents, and led to the creation of a new division called Mach Energetics. Another unit, Mach Propulsion, is working on manufacturing jet engines in-house.

To prove its production speed, Mach recently collaborated with 3D-printing specialist Divergent Technologies. Together, the two firms designed and manufactured a new drone in just 71 days, using 3D-printed structures to simplify the assembly process.

Mach's rapid ascent reflects a broader boom in defence technology funding. Heavy spending in the sector has already minted major players, such as Anduril Industries, which recently raised $5 billion at a $61 billion valuation, and Europe’s Helsing, which secured a $1.8 billion investment three months ago.