由红杉资本投资的国防科技公司马赫工业公司由21岁的伊桑·桑顿创立，该公司已与美国陆军签订合同，并计划建设其首家工厂。桑顿向TechCrunch透露了这一消息。
首席执行官桑顿表示，该工厂将位于加利福尼亚州亨廷顿海滩，占地11.5万平方英尺，马赫工业公司的总部也设在那里。虽然这听起来像是一个地价昂贵的武器工厂选址，但南加州——在SpaceX的阴影下——已成为美国蓬勃发展的国防科技产业的热点地区。
马赫工业公司还宣布，该公司已被美国陆军应用实验室选中，负责开发一款名为“战略打击”的垂直起降精确巡航导弹。这是一份研发合同，于2024年第三季度授予。
桑顿告诉TechCrunch，他和美国陆军之所以现在宣布这份合同，是因为该技术上个月成功完成了首次飞行测试。
至于工厂方面，这是像马赫工业公司和Anduril这样的国防科技公司正在努力创新的另一个领域。马赫工业公司的工厂，名为Forge 1，将是该公司计划建造的众多“分散式”工厂之一。
他解释道，“我们不会建造高度集中的工厂，而是会建造许多小型工厂，从而真正建立一个生存防御工业基地。”这些工厂的设计将涵盖从原材料到最终组装的整个流程。
除了美国境内其他尚未确定的地点外，他还希望在国际上设立工厂。
位于亨廷顿的工厂目前正在生产该公司的两款主要产品：一种名为Glide的武器和一种名为Viper的超轻型喷气动力垂直起降无人机（UAV）。Viper以其完全垂直起降而闻名，无需跑道，Mach表示，它的制造成本比传统无人机低300倍。
他说，“Viper导弹可以在这种分散式的工厂网络中生产，这意义重大。它不需要特殊的工具，这意味着如果美国需要提高产量，我们不必依赖这些集中式工厂。”
Glide是一种从位于太空边缘的飞行器上投放的炸弹。这应该能使Glide拥有更远的射程（马赫工业公司声称其射程无限，可以攻击地球上任何目标），同时也使其更难被击落。
桑顿表示，这家首家工厂未来应该能够每月生产1000枚Viper导弹和3000枚Glide炸弹。
马赫工业公司是一家备受瞩目的国防科技初创公司，因为它是红杉资本的首笔国防科技投资，而且桑顿在创立这家公司时还只是个十几岁的少年。
他19岁时从麻省理工学院辍学，投身于马赫工业公司的创业，并很快吸引了红杉资本的斯蒂芬妮·詹和肖恩·马奎尔成为投资者。他们领投了马赫工业公司于 2023 年 6 月宣布的 570 万美元种子轮融资。几个月后，在 2023 年 10 月，Bedrock Capital 的创始人杰夫·刘易斯领投了马赫工业公司的 7900 万美元 A 轮融资。
虽然国防科技行业的许多创始人都很年轻（帕尔默·拉基创立 Anduril 时才二十五六岁），但这家公司的创立契机却源于桑顿还在读高中时。
他说，“高中时，我开办了一个木工和金属加工车间，以此来启动公司并开始生产最初的产品。然后，我做了一件风险最大的事情，那就是从麻省理工学院辍学——当时我们还没有资金，也没有团队。”
此后，马赫工业公司已成为国防科技领域的热门公司之一。例如，它是少数几家与著名 Palantir 前招聘员彼得森·康威合作的公司之一。该公司目前拥有数十名员工。
Sequoia-backed Mach Industries, the defense tech founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, landed a contract with the U.S. Army and has plans for its first factory, Thornton told TechCrunch.
The factory will be 115,000 square feet in Huntington Beach, California, where Mach’s headquarters is located, CEO Thornton said. While that sounds like an expensive zip code for a weapons factory, Southern California — in the shadow of SpaceX — has become a hotspot for America’s burgeoning defense tech industry.
Mach is also announcing it was selected by the Army Applications Laboratory to develop a vertical takeoff precision cruise missile it calls “Strategic Strike.” This was a developmental contract that was awarded in the third quarter of 2024.
Thornton tells TechCrunch he and the U.S. Army are announcing this contract now because the technology successfully met its initial flight tests last month.
As for the factory, that’s another area where defense tech companies like Mach, as well as Anduril, are trying to innovate. Mach’s factory, which it calls Forge 1, will be one of many “decentralized” factories the company plans to build.
“Instead of very centralized factories, we will build many, many smaller factories to actually have a survival defense industrial base,” he explained. The factories will be designed to take raw materials through final assembly.
In addition to other as-yet-to-be-determined sites in the U.S., he hopes to have international locations.
The Huntington factory is already building both of the company’s main products, a weapon called Glide and a super-light jet-powered vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) called Viper. Viper is known for its completely vertical takeoffs, requiring no runway, and Mach says it is up to 300 times less expensive to build than traditional UAVs.
“Viper is manufacturable in that decentralized sort of web of factories, and that’s a huge deal. You don’t require specialty tooling to make it, which means that if the U.S. has to ramp up production, we won’t rely on these centralized locations,” he said.
Glide is a bomb deployed from a vehicle positioned at the edge of space. This is supposed to give Glide more range (Mach claims it will have infinite range to drop on targets anywhere on Earth) and also make it more difficult to shoot down.
Thornton says this first factory should one day be able to produce 1,000 Vipers and 3,000 Glides a month.
Mach Industries is a buzzy defense tech startup because it was Sequoia’s first defense tech investment and also because Thornton was a teen when he founded the company.
He dropped out of MIT to work on Mach when he was just 19 and soon landed Sequoia’s Stephanie Zhan and Shaun Maguire as investors. They led Mach’s $5.7 million seed round announced in June 2023. A few months later, in October 2023, Geoff Lewis, founder of Bedrock Capital, led Mach’s $79 million Series A.
While many of the defense tech industry’s founders are young (Palmer Luckey was in his mid-20s when he founded Anduril), the impetus for this company came when Thornton was still in high school.
“Back in high school, I ran a wood and metal workshop to actually bootstrap the company and start making initial products. And then probably the highest risk thing I did, I dropped out of MIT — before we had capital, or before I had a team,” he said.
Mach has since become one of the “it” companies in defense tech. For instance, it’s one of the handful of companies that famed former Palantir recruiter Peterson Conwayworks with. It now employs dozens.