OnePlus Co-founder Carl Pei's Nothing Raises $15 Million from Google Ventures; Total Funding Jumps to $22 Million

After parting ways with OnePlus last year, Carl Pei, the co-founder of the popular smartphone brand, has announced his new venture. He calls the brand “Nothing”, explaining that the concept behind the unusual name was that the company aims to create products that blend in with our lives invisibly. The new project will be headquartered in London and has received initial seed investment from the likes of iPod inventor Tony Fadell; one of Twitch’s founders Kevin Lin; Reddit’s head honcho Steve Huffman; and popular YouTuber Casey Neistat. More details here.

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei recently announced the launch of his new company called Nothing. The company has still kept its first product under the wraps and is expected to unveil it later this year. Ahead of the product launch, the consumer technology company has raised $ 15 million in a Series A round led by Google Ventures (GV).

The latest announcement comes following Nothing’s $7 million seed financing from high-profile entrepreneurs and tech leaders. CRED founder Kunal Shah has also invested an undisclosed sum in Nothing. With the new funding, the company plans to expand its team and operations, further invest in R&D, as well as launch its community and first products in the coming month.

“We are grateful to have a venture capital firm of this calibre help in building Nothing together with us,” said Carl Pei, CEO and Co-founder of Nothing. “We plan to aggressively grow the company, in particular, our R&D and design capabilities, to realise our mission of removing barriers between people and technology.”

The new round takes the total amount of financing Nothing has raised to over $22 million. Previous investors include notable tech leaders and investors such as Casey Neistat, Kevin Lin, Steve Huffman, Kunal Shah. 

Nothing also plans to open up for its community and the general public to invest as part of its Series A round. More details will be announced in the coming weeks.

Nothing is known about the company’s first product. However, Pei confirmed that Nothing plans to make money by selling hardware first and that software will be something for the future. Pei also stressed that Nothing is an independently owned company with its own R&D department and besides using contract manufacturers for components, it will not re-label products between brands.