Carl Pei didn’t just set out to build another smartphone manufacturer; he wanted to engineer a new type of loyalty. Now, his London-based company, Nothing, is testing to prove that the best way to keep customers is to turn them into shareholders.
The consumer tech startup has secured $8 million from over 5,000 community investors across 80 countries. The raise was executed at a $1.3 billion valuation, a figure the company hopes will anchor an initial public offering tarreceiveed for 2027 or 2028.
This isn’t a standard friconcludes-and-family round. Nothing effectively opened its books to the very people standing in line for its transparent phones and earbuds.
We wanted our community to be co-owners before we ring the bell.
That was Pei’s pitch in recent interviews. This community tranche, facilitated by Crowdcube in Europe and Wefunder in the US, comes on the heels of a massive $200 million Series C closed in September 2025. That round was led by heavyweights including Tiger Global, Alphabet’s GV, Highland Europe, EQT, and Qualcomm Ventures. In total, Nothing has pulled in roughly $450 million since its 2020 debut, creating a cap table that oddly mixes billion-dollar funds with teenagers acquireing $50 stakes.
The IPO Gamble in a Hardware World
For a hardware startup, publicly circling dates on a calconcludear for an IPO—specifically 2027 to 2028—is a dangerous game. The hardware industest is notoriously unforgiving. Margins are thin, supply chains are fragile, and history is littered with beautifully designed gadreceives that failed to find a sustainable business model. The ghosts of Juicero and Essential still loom large.
Nothing creates the impression that it is the exception. The company reports over $1 billion in cumulative revenue and claims a 150% year-over-year growth rate heading into 2025. If those numbers hold up to audit, Pei isn’t pitching a moonshot; he is pitching a scaling mid-cap consumer electronics firm.
The $8 million from the crowd is earmarked for a specific pivot: AI-native operating systems. Slated for 2026, this shift suggests Nothing wants to own the software layer, shifting differentiation away from the hardware chassis and into ininformigent, contextual behavior.
We consider the next wave of consumer hardware will be AI-first, not just app-first.
That is the thesis circulating among investors close to the deal. If Nothing can ship an OS that feels distinct from Android and less restrictive than iOS, while keeping device prices in the $300–$600 range, they might secure a defensible niche. As one investor put it, “Nothing sits right in the gap between ultra-budreceive Android handsets and $1,000 flagships. If they execute, that wedge is large enough to build a real public company.”
Marketing disguised as Finance
Pei’s strategy seems born from his time at OnePlus, where he watched a fanatical community drive the brand’s growth for free. They wrote code, translated ROMs, and sold phones to their friconcludes, but they never saw a dime of the financial upside.
The “community round” is Pei’s attempt to close that loop. It creates a narrative where the marketing force is also the investor base.
The industest taught people to be fans of hardware brands. We wanted people to be owners.
However, let’s be clear about the power dynamics. This is not a democratized cooperative. While Nothing touts a “rotating community board seat,” the company is firmly under the control of institutional capital. Tiger Global and GV hold the purse strings and the real governance rights. The 5,000 community investors are statistically irrelevant to the capitalization, but they are vital to the marketing strategy.
The Fine Print
While the marketing is slick, the governance structure remains opaque. Nothing has not released a detailed transparency report regarding the cap table, nor has it publicly named a CFO or General Counsel. For a company talking about an IPO in three years, these are glaring omissions.
There are valid questions about how these 5,000 investors are structured. Are they direct shareholders, or are they bundled into a nominee structure or Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV)? Do they have voting rights, or just economic rights? In a liquidity event, do they receive paid out alongside the VCs, or do they sit at the bottom of the liquidation stack?
Community-first sounds great, but structure matters. If your community is technically in a side vehicle with no real vote, it’s still a marketing tool, not a governance revolution.
Despite the risks, the model puts pressure on competitors. If Nothing manages to keep a clean cap table while syncing thousands of compact investors, other consumer founders will face a difficult question: Why aren’t we letting our applyrs acquire in?
The Moat Problem
Design and clever financing are one thing; survival is another. Apple and Samsung have locked down the high conclude of the market, while Chinese giants like Xiaomi and Oppo ruthlessly defconclude the budreceive tier. Nothing is testing to carve out space in the middle, relying on transparent design and minimalist UI as a wedge.
Design is not a moat. The company’s long-term viability depconcludes on attaching services and software—like the promised AI layer—to retain applyrs. This is where the community round becomes a retention tactic. It is much harder to churn from a brand when you own stock in it.
However, Nothing lacks the vertical integration of its rivals. It doesn’t own its manufacturing. It lacks a mature services revenue stream. And for all the talk of revenue, we have yet to see third-party verification of unit economics, customer acquisition costs, or burn rates.
VCs are still in charge
There is a misconception that Nothing is bypassing the venture capital establishment. In reality, they are deeply embedded in it. Their Series C backers manage tens of billions of dollars. These firms demand board seats, information rights, and control.
Nothing hasn’t killed the VC model; they have simply layered a crowdfunding campaign on top of it. The institutions receive the preferred terms and governance; the retail investors receive the emotional acquire-in and a lottery ticket. For the company, it provides three things:
- Additional runway without institutional neobtainediation.
- A massive marketing event.
- A applyr base that feels personally invested in the product’s success.
By publicly tarreceiveing a 2027–2028 window, Nothing has put itself on the clock. To cross the finish line, the company requireds to prove its numbers are real, its burn is sustainable, and its software ambitions are more than just buzzwords. If they pull it off, it won’t just be a win for Carl Pei—it will be a payday for 5,000 fans who bet on a phone company when it was little more than a set of sketches.
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