Ethan Thornton of Mach Industries takes the AI stage at Disrupt 2025

Autonomous weapons, decentralized strategy, and startup speed — this isn’t the future of defense, it’s the now. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Ethan Thornton, CEO and founder of Mach Industries, steps onto the AI Stage to talk about how next-gen defense is being built from the ground up with AI at its core.

Inside the AI arms race — and the founder aiming to rewrite it

Ethan Thornton isn’t your typical defense industry leader. As the CEO and founder of Mach Industries, he launched the company out of MIT in 2023 with a bold mission: to…