Mach Industries, founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, Lands Army Army, builds a weapon factory

Supported by Sequoia Mach Industries, The Defense Tech, founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, has contracted with the US Army and has plans for his first factory, Tornton told TechCrunch.

The factory will be 115,000 square meters in Huntington Beach, California, where a match headquarters is located, said Executive Director Torton. Although this sounds like an expensive zip code for a weapon factory, southern California – in the shade of SpaceX – has become a hot spot for the growing defense industry in America.

Mach also announces he was chosen by Army Application Laboratory To develop a vertical precision take -off rocket, she calls a “strategic strike.” It was a development contract, which was awarded in the third quarter of 2024.

Thornton tells TechCrunch that he and the US army are announcing this contract now, as technology successfully implements their original flight tests last month.

As for the factory, this is another area where defense technology companies such as Mach, as well as Anduriltry to innovate. The factory of a match called Forge 1 will be one of the many “decentralized” factories the company plans to build.

“Instead of many centralized factories, we will build many, much smaller factories to actually have an industrial defense base for survival,” he explained. The factories will be designed to accept raw materials through the final assembly.

In addition to others, as they still need to be determined in the US, it also hopes to have international places.

The Huntington factory is already building both major products of the company, a weapon called Glide and a super light vertical take -off and landing of aircraft (UAV) called Viper. Viper is known for its fully vertical take -offs, not requiring a runway, and a match says it is up to 300 times more cheaper to build than traditional BLA.

“Viper is manufactured in this decentralized type of network of factories and this is a huge deal. You do not need specialized tools to do so, which means that if the US is to increase production, we will not rely on these centralized places, “he said.

Glide is a bomb located by a balloon -like vehicle located at the end of the space. It is supposed that this will give Glide more scope (Mach claims that there will be an endless range to descend the whole everywhere on Earth) and also make it difficult to lower.

Thornton says this first factory should one day be able to produce 1000 Cinderella and 3000 slides a month.

Founder of teenagers, $ 85 million in funding

Mach Industries is a buzzing startup of defense technology as it was the first investment in Sequoia’s defense technology and also because Thornton was a teenager when he founded the company.

He gave up Mit to work on a match when he was only 19 years old and soon landed Stephanie Stephanie Gian and Sean Maguire as investors. They led seeds of $ 5.7 million from $ 5.7 million declared In June 2023, several months later, in October 2023, founder of Jeff Lewis of Series A.

While many of the founders of the technology industry are young (Palmer Luke was in the mid -20s when he founded Anduril), the impetus of this company came when Thornton was still in high school.

“Back to high school, I was managing a wood and metal workshop to actually load the company and start making original products. And then probably the highest risk I made, I dropped out of MIT – before we had capital or before I had a team, “he said.

Since then, the match has become one of the IT companies at Defense Tech. For example, this is one of a handful of companies that Famous former recruiter of Palantir Peterson Konway It works with. Now dozens are working.