UK smartphone company Nothing raises $200m funding

Company shares $1.3bn valuation to build AI-native devices

Consumer technology company Nothing has secured $200 million in Series C funding, valuing the business at $1.3 billion.

The London-based company has secured the $200 million finding as it sets out to develop what it calls an “AI-native platform” where hardware and software converge into a single intelligent system.

The round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from existing investors including GV, Highland Europe, EQT, Latitude, I2BF and Tapestry, as well as new strategic backers Nikhil Kamath and Qualcomm Ventures.

Founded in 2020 by former OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, Nothing has positioned itself as the first independent smartphone maker to scale globally in more than a decade. The company said it has shipped millions of devices in the past four years and crossed $1 billion in cumulative sales at the start of 2025, after growing 150% in 2024.

Pei said the company’s next phase will focus on creating an operating system designed for the AI era, one that is “hyper-personalised” to each user and capable of adapting interfaces to context and intent. Unlike today’s largely uniform smartphone operating systems, Nothing envisions “a billion different operating systems for a billion different people”.

Nothing believes its position at the “last-mile distribution point” in consumer tech, through smartphones, wearables and audio devices, gives it an advantage in building AI systems that are deeply embedded in people’s daily lives. The company plans to expand this across emerging categories, including smart glasses, humanoid robots and electric vehicles.

In the near term, Nothing said it expects the smartphone to remain the only device shipping at billion-unit scale each year. However, it is also developing a new class of AI-native devices designed to capture user context across modalities and generate interfaces on demand. The first of these products is expected to launch in 2026.

Alongside the Series C, Nothing said it is also preparing a new community funding round, giving fans and supporters another opportunity to invest in the company.