Nothing closes $200M Series C led by Tiger Global,...

Smartphone startup Nothing introduced in the present day 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 akin 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 gadgets at aggressive costs — additionally acquired new strategic backing from Nikhil Kamath and Qualcomm Ventures. The brand new funding takes Nothing’s total 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 know-how. 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’s going to 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 12 months. An early investor within the startup instructed TechCrunch that they’re proud of the corporate’s progress trajectory and highway to profitability.

The startup mentioned that up up to now, it has frolicked constructing a provide chain and infrastructure to launch a product inside months and ship it worldwide. Notably, its just lately launched Cellphone (3) — which showcases the corporate’s signature clear design aesthetic and distinctive person interface — was solely its second handset to obtain general distribution in the U.S.

Nothing has lower than 1% market share globally, however in India, its greatest market, it has managed to seize 2% share, in accordance with analytics agency IDC. The corporate has shipped 5.1 million items thus far, with the corporate transport over one million items simply in Q2 2025. IDC mentioned its world growth has been sluggish as 80% of its items are nonetheless bought in Asia.

Pei has mentioned that he desires to focus on his model in the direction of the following era of customers who may search alternate options past incumbents.

“The best way we’ve differentiated our model and differentiated our merchandise is de facto resonating with our group of customers. We’re focusing on the following era. They’re taken with tech. They’re taken with creativity and design, and we actually discovered resonance amongst that shopper group,” he instructed TechCrunch through the Phone (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 big 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 prolong past smartphones. At present, we have now solely seen a number of glimpses of AI within the working system with features like Essential 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 providers efforts.

Zappalà mentioned that the problem in constructing such an working system is each a buyer expertise and a belief subject.

“I believe 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 succeed in a stage the place customers should not double-checking the output,” he mentioned.

Firms like Apple have struggled to integrate AI features effectively into their working programs. For Nothing, the problem is discovering the fitting 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 no less than 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 system subsequent 12 months. Nevertheless, there haven’t been many success tales within the AI {hardware} area. AI {hardware} startup Humane was sold 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 update just lately after the corporate wasn’t glad with the primary iteration.