Nothing closes $200M Series A as Carl Pei teases first AI hardware devices launching next year

really have to stand next to the horse to get the scale. Well, uh we have Carl Pay from nothing uh in the reream waiting room. We'll bring him into the TBPN Ultra Dome now and get the update on nothing for this. Carl, how you doing? Long time no see. Look at this view. Looks fantastic. Long time no see.

It's good to be back. It's great to have you. Welcome to the show. Give us the update. Give us the news. What's the latest in your world? Yeah, there's a lot happening over here. Uh, last month we just announced a $200 million series A raise. Let's go. U, we're very excited about that. We got Henry on the drums.

Uh thank you so much. Congratulations. What's uh what was the biggest catalyst for that? Is that just just growth, adoption, churn? Is this the AI narrative? Like what what was the big catalyst? Yeah, I think it's just growth.

Like last time I was on the show, I told you guys that we're approaching a billion dollars in revenue just this year. Wow. Um in the last couple of years we've been really focused on building the foundations because we all know you know making hardware is pretty pretty tough. There's so many things you got to get right.

So um we created this like smartphones. It's one of the most difficult products to to make in in hardware and we're seeing a lot of traction in the market.

So, I think this fund raise, it's more about all the traction we have in terms of growth, but also with an eye to where we're going in the future because I think in the next couple of years, we're going to see an explosion of new hardware and software products based on all the advancements we're seeing in AI.

And uh I think we're just pretty well positioned to this opportunity because on one hand, we're not too small. Like if you're too small, it's hard to ship like really high quality products. We are a consumer business, so people actually like real people spend real money on our products.

And we're also not too big, right? If you're too big, it's kind of you're already super profitable. It's a public company and it's hard to really um latch on to these new opportunities.

So, I think we're in a sweet spot where we can still move fast and be super creative, but also have the infrastructure that we build from engineering perspective, supply chain perspective, and also go to market perspective.

How quickly are you and the team shipping features and functionality that you just want to try yourself that's maybe not ready for users? I mean, I I can't imagine there's so many people building an AI that wish that they had unlimited access to their like hardware and could do whatever they wanted, right?

Let's try a new model in there. Let's try this open source model. Let's try this new transcription. Yeah, he he demoed that exact feature that I was begging for. And and so I just feel like you guys are Yeah. have that incredible advantage of owning the full stack.

Yeah, we're definitely cooking up a lot of uh products right now and I think you know having built a team that can make phones, making other form factors is um a lot easier. So, we're going to be shipping our first AI devices beginning uh starting next year. Let's go. Um but the other really What can you give us?

Give us stuff then form fat. Is it larger than a bread box? Is it bigger than a phone? Is it smaller than a phone? Well, like you know, we're in a phase for the entire tech industry where we're looking for product market fit for the next form factor. Totally.

Um, we don't think anybody's going to get it right on the first shot. So, we're really gearing ourselves up to iterate quickly, take feedback quickly, and ship stuff with great taste.

So I think that's the kind of winning strategy if you don't have uh like products with pre-existing product market fit to uh to build towards. We were at Meta Connect and and and they we heard I heard an interesting take from their head of of hardware devices.

Uh he was saying that he's a big fan of of technology that mimics things that we've been wearing for uh like centuries. So, he wants to do glasses, a necklace, a chain, a wristband, a watch, a hat, you know, uh, but not try and create something that no one's ever interacted with before.

The exception is obviously the phone. We weren't really I guess we were carrying around notebooks before the iPad or something. But do you do you ascribe to that belief that it's easier to bootstrap a new hardware device off of replacing a a ring or replacing a, you know, a hat or something like that?

Do you like that framework? I do because the product market fit risk and the kind of user education risk drops significantly. Yeah. Um but I think the real catalyst to these new devices gaining adoption is actually consumers finding value in them.

And the reason why I believe they will find value in them is over the next couple of years as people find that these new devices with these new sensors can capture more context on them then the product will become more personalized and more capable um for each individual. Is that just cameras and audio?

Uh I was laughing myself about uh is is uh smellvision a prerequisite to AGI and I don't know if there's any progress on getting sensors, but it's probably not on the road map for next year. Okay. Well, good luck. Hopefully, you have some We have one guy in R&D, Carl P says that entirely against smellvision. Okay.

Um the other thing I wanted to mention was um our our announcement yesterday. We announced something called Essential Apps. Mhm.

And basically it's a platform where every person, every creative person can just use natural language to type what kind of apps they want on their on their phone and then they click deploy and it shows up on their phone on their nothing phone. Wow.

Um you know that's the kind of thing that that how many how many people that are building vibe coding products wish that they had even the the ability to do something like that without having to make it work within Apple's ecosystem. It's just it's pretty you guys have such an advantage in terms of experimentation.

Yeah, that's the fun part about uh owning the full stack. And today the we just la yesterday we just launched the alpha. So the capabilities are still quite limited. But we're already seeing just after 24 hours almost 10,000 people sign up for the weight list.

And it's not just like any weight list because you have to pitch your app idea for us to accept you into the weight list. So I'm super excited to see what people build and deploy. Uh, if you were to build a humanoid robot, would you go with clear plastic so you could see the inards?

And do you think that would be more dystopian or actually more uh more like you'd be humans would be willing to embrace it because it's not pretending to be a human. I know exactly what it is.

And I think would it get us away from like the uncanny valley of a a humanoid robot that's trying to look like a human and has some sort of skin mask on and it looks kind of creepy versus like if you're just seeing the the the guts that's maybe better. What What do you think?

I think it needs to be even friendlier looking because all this new technology is very exciting for us in the tech industry but out in the real world a lot of people are super scared of what's going to come. So it has to be disarming has to look friendly. There has to be a warm feeling interacting with that technology.

Um, so it should probably like a toy or something. Did you see what Door Dash did this week with Dot? It's a It's such a cute little robot. They absolutely crushed it. So, I think that's the way to go. I love it. More friendly robots, more friendly creative uh hardware devices. Very excited for everything you're doing.

Thank you so much for stopping by the TVP. Always great to get the update and congratulations on the progress. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one.