Nothing

Nothing is a London-based consumer electronics company founded in January 2021 by Carl Pei, the Chinese-Swedish entrepreneur and OnePlus co-founder. Built around a mission to remove barriers between people and technology, Nothing has rapidly established itself as the first new smartphone brand to achieve meaningful global scale in over a decade — standing apart from Apple and Samsung through a philosophy of radical transparency, expressive design, and community-driven development.

The consumer electronics market had stagnated by the early 2020s: upgrade cycles shortened while devices became increasingly indistinguishable from each other. Pei founded Nothing to challenge that, arguing that the next wave of technology change — driven by AI — would reshuffle the industry the way the mobile internet had upended Nokia and BlackBerry. Nothing’s approach was to build hardware and software together, with a distinctive transparent aesthetic, a tight community relationship, and an early strategic focus on what it means to build consumer devices natively around AI.

The company launched its first product, the Ear (1) wireless earbuds, in July 2021 to wide critical acclaim. Its first smartphone, the Nothing Phone (1), followed in July 2022. By 2024, Nothing had surpassed $1 billion in lifetime revenue, recording 150% year-on-year growth, and had shipped millions of products globally across smartphones, audio devices, and wearables. The company also spun off CMF, a budget sub-brand headquartered in India, as a standalone subsidiary. Nothing has run three community investment rounds alongside its institutional funding, attracting nearly 13,000 retail shareholders who collectively invested over $16 million.

In September 2025, Nothing raised $200 million in a Series C led by Tiger Global at a $1.3 billion valuation. Strategic investors Qualcomm Ventures and Nikhil Kamath joined alongside GV, EQT Ventures, Highland Europe, and Latitude. Total funding now exceeds $450 million. Nothing is now building an AI-native operating system designed to be hyper-personalised, with plans to extend the platform beyond smartphones to smart glasses, robots, and other form factors as it targets IPO readiness within three years.