Ethan Thornton started Mach Industries at 16, dropped out of MIT, and is now running six simultaneous defense programs: jet engines, cruise missiles, a surface-to-air missile system, and a new 40-foot VTOL strike aircraft just contracted by the U.S. Navy.

At StrictlyVC Los Angeles 2026, TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos sat down with the Mach Industries founder and CEO for a rare on-stage conversation about what it actually takes to build a serious defense hardware company from scratch — and why the U.S. has no choice but to move faster.

More than 90 percent of American-caught fish is processed overseas, and often in China, before it comes back to the U.S. Shin K wants to change that with robotics, computer vision, and a vertically integrated supply chain built from scratch.

At StrictlyVC Los Angeles 2026, TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos sat down with Saif Khawaja, founder and CEO of Shin K, and Delian Asparouhov of Founders Fund to talk about one of the most unexpected bets in venture capital right now.

They cover everything from the Japanese fish-killing technique that became a startup thesis, why American fish is now being imported into Japanese fish markets for the first time ever, and how Founders Fund thinks about contrarian bets in food and agriculture.

Just as last week was ending, the US government forced Anthropic to pull its two newest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security concerns after Amazon researchers allegedly found a way to bypass Fable 5’s guardrails.

Cybersecurity researchers have since signed an open letter calling the move dangerous, and Anthropic itself noted the same jailbreaks exist in other models. So is this a genuine security concern, or just the latest chapter in a messy relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration?

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Anthony Ha, Sean O’Kane, and Rebecca Bellan unpack what the ban means for developers building on Anthropic’s platform and for anyone watching the IPO, why it might accidentally be good for the company, and more of the week’s headlines.

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:28 The US government pulls Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5

03:57 Cybersecurity researchers push back on the ban

06:33 Could the ban actually help Anthropic’s business?

12:26 The UK’s sweeping social media ban for users under 16

21:34 SpaceX acquires Cursor for $60B in stock

28:53 Jeff Bezos’s $12B bet on physical AI with Prometheus

32:04 Outro