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 World. With this spherical, the patron 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, identified for high-performance units at aggressive costs — additionally acquired 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 staff at Nothing are reimagining {hardware} and software program with an AI overlay to place their merchandise for the subsequent period of private know-how. We’re excited to associate with this distinctive staff as they pioneer AI-native experiences,” mentioned Matt Watcher, a associate at Tiger World, in a press release to TechCrunch.
The corporate mentioned it’ll quickly open up one other neighborhood funding spherical. In earlier neighborhood rounds the corporate raised $11.5 million in whole.
The corporate has guess on design differentiation thus far, and it has served the startup nicely. Nothing says it clocked in over $1 billion in whole gross sales earlier this 12 months. An early investor within the startup instructed TechCrunch that they’re proud of the corporate’s development 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 Telephone (3) — which showcases the corporate’s signature clear design aesthetic and distinctive consumer interface — was solely its second handset to obtain basic distribution within the U.S.
Nothing Telephone 3 Picture Credit: Ivan MehtaImage Credit:Ivan Mehta
Nothing has lower than 1% market share globally, however in India, its greatest market, it has managed to seize 2% share, in response to analytics agency IDC. The corporate has shipped 5.1 million items up to now, with the corporate transport over one million items simply in Q2 2025. IDC mentioned its international enlargement has been sluggish as 80% of its items are nonetheless bought in Asia.
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Pei has mentioned that he desires to focus on his model in direction of the subsequent technology 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 customers. We’re concentrating on the subsequent technology. They’re interested by tech. They’re interested by creativity and design, and we actually discovered resonance amongst that shopper group,” he instructed TechCrunch through the Telephone (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 trade. He mentioned that Nothing is now a acknowledged identify within the trade, 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 prolong past smartphones. At the moment, we’ve got solely seen just a few glimpses of AI within the working system with options like Important Search, a sensible search perform that helps customers discover data throughout their gadget. 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 challenge.
“I feel the problem of constructing an efficient AI-first expertise just isn’t distinctive to Nothing. That is greater than a technical problem; AI options want to succeed in a stage the place customers usually are not double-checking the output,” he mentioned.
Firms like Apple have struggled to combine AI options successfully into their working programs. For Nothing, the problem is discovering the precise 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 kind issue for all shopper AI functions” for at the least three to 5 years, he mentioned through the dialog with TechCrunch in July.
With this fundraising announcement, the corporate mentioned it plans to launch an AI-first gadget subsequent 12 months. Nonetheless, 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 gadget, and AI assistant firm Rabbit has has been working to enhance its R1 gadget, releasing a brand new software program replace lately after the corporate wasn’t happy with the primary iteration.
