Nominal raises $240M at a $3B valuation to bring AI to hardware engineering
Lightspeed led the round, co-led by Insight Partners, for the Austin startup whose AI tools help engineers test complex hardware.
Nominal has raised $240 million in Series C funding at a $3 billion valuation, the Austin-based company announced on November 9. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, co-led by Insight Partners. Other investors include Lux Capital, Sequoia, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Avenir, Salesforce Ventures, M13, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Red Glass Ventures, PSP Growth and Deployment Capital.
Nominal builds a hardware intelligence platform: software that connects test data with the engineering context behind it, so teams can understand complex systems, trace problems to their cause and let AI agents run analyses with evidence engineers can check. Its users span aerospace, defense, robotics, energy and advanced manufacturing. More than 80 commercial and government organizations use the platform, including five of the seven largest defense contractors. At Anduril, more than 300 engineers rely on it across programs, and analysis that once took five to six hours now happens in near real time; a pilot at shipbuilder HII cut some production test steps by about half, and Hermeus cut the time between uploading data and reviewing it by 80 percent while building its Quarterhorse Mk 1 aircraft in seven months.
The funding will go toward deeper products for engineers and engineering enterprises, including agents and applications across a machine's lifecycle, from requirements verification and planning to scheduling and fleet health, plus expansion into new industries and regions and strategic acquisitions. Nominal acquired Fid Labs and Pull Systems this year. The U.S. Air Force also recently selected the company for a $71.2 million Strategic Funding Increase to support Collaborative Combat Aircraft capabilities.
The valuation has tripled in eight months: Nominal raised a $155 million Series B extension at a $1 billion valuation in March, led by Founders Fund's Trae Stephens, and says revenue has more than tripled since the start of the year. "Hardware engineering is getting its AI moment, with real operational value that goes far beyond making existing workflows faster," said Cameron McCord, Nominal's co-founder and CEO. The marker to watch is whether the platform moves beyond defense primes into robotics and broader manufacturing, which is exactly the expansion the new money is meant to fund.