Smartphone startup Nothing introduced as we speak that it closed its Collection C spherical of $200 million, which was led by the funding agency Tiger World. With this spherical, the buyer electronics firm is now valued at $1.3 billion.
Different buyers within the spherical included present backers similar 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, recognized 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 complete funding to over $450 million.
“Carl and the crew at Nothing are reimagining {hardware} and software program with an AI overlay to place their merchandise for the following period of private expertise. We’re excited to associate with this distinctive crew as they pioneer AI-native experiences,” mentioned Matt Watcher, a associate at Tiger World, in an announcement to TechCrunch.
The corporate mentioned it would quickly open up one other group funding spherical. In earlier group rounds the corporate raised $11.5 million in complete.
The corporate has guess on design differentiation up to now, and it has served the startup nicely. Nothing says it clocked in over $1 billion in complete gross sales earlier this yr. An early investor within the startup informed TechCrunch that they’re pleased with the corporate’s progress trajectory and highway to profitability.
The startup mentioned that up up to now, it has hung out constructing a provide chain and infrastructure to launch a product inside months and ship it worldwide. Notably, its lately launched Cellphone (3) — which showcases the corporate’s signature clear design aesthetic and distinctive person interface — was solely its second handset to obtain basic 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, in line with analytics agency IDC. The corporate has shipped 5.1 million models up to now, with the corporate delivery over 1,000,000 models simply in Q2 2025. IDC mentioned its international growth has been sluggish as 80% of its models are nonetheless offered in Asia.
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Pei has mentioned that he desires to focus on his model in the direction of the following technology of customers who may search options past incumbents.
“The best way we’ve differentiated our model and differentiated our merchandise is admittedly resonating with our group of customers. We’re concentrating on the following technology. They’re desirous about tech. They’re desirous about creativity and design, and we actually discovered resonance amongst that shopper group,” he informed TechCrunch in the course of the Cellphone (3)’s launch in July.
Highland Europe associate Tony Zappalà, who’s an present investor within the firm, mentioned that the corporate has delivered on its guarantees and has room to develop on this large business. He mentioned that Nothing is now a acknowledged identify within the business, which has its personal benefits by way of attracting expertise and constructing provide chain relationships.
AI imaginative and prescient
The corporate desires to construct an working system with AI and personalization options that may lengthen past smartphones. At present, we have now solely seen a number of glimpses of AI within the working system with options like Important Search, a wise search operate that helps customers discover data throughout their system. 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 steer its AI companies efforts.
Zappalà mentioned that the problem in constructing such an working system is each a buyer expertise and a belief situation.
“I believe the problem of constructing an efficient AI-first expertise isn’t distinctive to Nothing. That is greater than a technical problem; AI options want to succeed in a stage the place customers aren’t double-checking the output,” he mentioned.
Firms like Apple have struggled to combine AI options successfully into their working techniques. For Nothing, the problem is discovering the proper stability between newness and helpfulness whereas executing AI options.
Pei believes that smartphones stay one of the simplest ways to ship AI, and they are going to be “the dominant type issue for all shopper AI purposes” for at the very least three to 5 years, he mentioned in the course of the dialog with TechCrunch in July.
With this fundraising announcement, the corporate mentioned it plans to launch an AI-first system subsequent yr. Nevertheless, there haven’t been many success tales within the AI {hardware} area. AI {hardware} startup Humane was offered to HP after combating its AI Pin system, and AI assistant firm Rabbit has has been working to enhance its R1 system, releasing a new software program replace lately after the corporate wasn’t happy with the primary iteration.
