Smartphone startup Nothing introduced right this moment that it closed its Sequence C spherical of $200 million, which was led by the funding agency Tiger International. With this spherical, the buyer electronics firm is now valued at $1.3 billion.
Different buyers within the spherical included current backers comparable to enterprise outfits GV, Highland Europe, EQT, Latitude, I2BF, and Tapestry. The corporate, based by Carl Pei — who beforehand co-founded Chinese language smartphone maker OnePlus, identified for high-performance units at aggressive costs — additionally obtained new strategic backing from Nikhil Kamath and Qualcomm Ventures. The brand new funding takes Nothing’s whole funding to over $450 million.
“Carl and the group at Nothing are reimagining {hardware} and software program with an AI overlay to place their merchandise for the subsequent period of private expertise. We’re excited to accomplice with this distinctive group as they pioneer AI-native experiences,” stated Matt Watcher, a accomplice at Tiger International, in an announcement to TechCrunch.
The corporate stated it’s going to quickly open up one other group funding spherical. In earlier group rounds the corporate raised $11.5 million in whole.
The corporate has wager on design differentiation to date, and it has served the startup properly. Nothing says it clocked in over $1 billion in whole gross sales earlier this 12 months. An early investor within the startup informed TechCrunch that they’re proud of the corporate’s progress trajectory and highway to profitability.
The startup stated that up thus far, it has hung out constructing a provide chain and infrastructure to launch a product inside months and ship it worldwide. Notably, its just lately launched Telephone (3) — which showcases the corporate’s signature clear design aesthetic and distinctive person interface — was solely its second handset to obtain common distribution within the U.S.
Nothing has lower than 1% market share globally, however in India, its largest market, it has managed to seize 2% share, based on analytics agency IDC. The corporate has shipped 5.1 million items up to now, with the corporate delivery over one million items simply in Q2 2025. IDC stated its international growth has been gradual as 80% of its items are nonetheless bought in Asia.
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Pei has stated that he desires to focus on his model in direction of the subsequent era of customers who may search alternate options past incumbents.
“The way in which we’ve differentiated our model and differentiated our merchandise is admittedly resonating with our group of shoppers. We’re concentrating on the subsequent era. They’re excited by tech. They’re excited by creativity and design, and we actually discovered resonance amongst that shopper group,” he informed TechCrunch in the course of the Telephone (3)’s launch in July.
Highland Europe accomplice Tony Zappalà, who’s an current investor within the firm, stated that the corporate has delivered on its guarantees and has room to develop on this enormous trade. He stated that Nothing is now a acknowledged title within the trade, which has its personal benefits when it comes to attracting expertise and constructing provide chain relationships.
AI imaginative and prescient
The corporate desires to construct an working system with AI and personalization options which may lengthen past smartphones. At the moment, we’ve solely seen a number of glimpses of AI within the working system with options like Important Search, a sensible search perform that helps customers discover info throughout their machine. The startup has employed Sélim Benayat, a former govt from Linktree and founding father of Bento (a platform that creates personalised touchdown pages for social media profiles), to guide its AI companies efforts.
Zappalà stated that the problem in constructing such an working system is each a buyer expertise and a belief subject.
“I feel the problem of constructing an efficient AI-first expertise will not be distinctive to Nothing. That is greater than a technical problem; AI options want to achieve a stage the place customers are usually not double-checking the output,” he stated.
Corporations like Apple have struggled to combine AI options successfully into their working techniques. For Nothing, the issue is discovering the precise steadiness between newness and helpfulness whereas executing AI options.
Pei believes that smartphones stay one of the best ways to ship AI, and they are going to be “the dominant type issue for all shopper AI purposes” for a minimum of three to 5 years, he stated in the course of the dialog with TechCrunch in July.
With this fundraising announcement, the corporate stated it plans to launch an AI-first machine subsequent 12 months. Nevertheless, there haven’t been many success tales within the AI {hardware} house. AI {hardware} startup Humane was bought to HP after scuffling with its AI Pin machine, and AI assistant firm Rabbit has has been working to enhance its R1 machine, releasing a new software update just lately after the corporate wasn’t happy with the primary iteration.
