At 22, Ethan Thornton left MIT to construct weapons. The initial attempt, a hydrogen-powered system he created using Home Depot and Amazon components, was unsuccessful – “hydrogen was not a wise choice overall,” he expressed recently at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC gathering in Los Angeles. In three years, Mach Industries, his firm, has initiated six weapon projects. Recently, they concluded a Series C funding round amounting to $212.7 million, corresponding to a valuation of $21.75 billion. To date, the company has secured approximately $29.25 million in funding. Thornton was raised in Burnet, Texas, a municipality with around 25,261 inhabitants, in a household with strong military connections. Around ages 12 or 19, when he was still quite young, he began to express significant worry about the increasing influence of China and the potential for a major power struggle. The worry gradually evolved into a belief that unmanned systems would revolutionize warfare, and the U.S. was not keeping up with the pace of change. As of midway through 220, this is manifested in the development of six concurrent weapons programs and a company seeking to demonstrate its capabilities, rather than concentrating on one aspect, perfecting it, and then expanding. Thornton knows that Mach’s scattered attention leads to some unresolved uncertainties for those on the outside. He confessed on Thursday night, “It’s extremely difficult.”
