Mach Industries, the three-year-old defense tech startup run by 22-year-old founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, has raised a $300 million Series C at a $1.8 billion valuation, the company announced on Monday. The raise nearly quadruples the valuation of the company in a year. In June 2025, Mach raised $100 million at a $470 million valuation. Other investors include Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Khosla Ventures. Since building autonomous weapons is a capital-intensive industry, Thornton began actively fundraising a couple of months ago, he told TechCrunch, and quickly discovered that the round would be popular with investors. 'We went out to raise 200 [million dollars] and we were extremely oversubscribed at 200 and happy with the price, so we decided to push up to 300. We're still oversubscribed at the 300 mark,' Thornton said of the fundraising efforts. Founded in 2023, Mach and its growth have been a wild ride for Thornton, who famously dropped out of MIT at 19 to start the...
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