Nominal co-founders Jason Hoch, Cameron McCord and Bryce Strauss Credit: Sequoia Capital Nominal, whose software helps engineers test and analyse hardware such as aircraft, satellites and robots, has raised $240M in a Series C round at a $3B valuation. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round and Insight Partners co-led it, Nominal announced on Monday. That is triple its valuation in March. Back then, Nominal raised $80M at $1B in a round led by Founders Fund.
Nominal told Paayal Zaveri at Bloomberg that its revenue has more than tripled so far this year. Bloomberg linked that growth to a boom in defence technology spending. Lux Capital, Sequoia, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Avenir, Salesforce Ventures, M13 and Lockheed Martin Ventures also invested in Nominal’s Series C. So did Red Glass Ventures, PSP Growth and Deployment Capital. “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 chief executive. “The companies building the world’s most advanced machines have decades of hard-won knowledge in their organizations.” Five of the seven largest defence contractors More than 80 commercial and government organisations use Nominal, including five of the seven largest defence contractors, the company says.
Its software brings together test data from hardware and the engineering context behind it, such as configurations and earlier experiments. Nominal Analyst, its first AI agent, runs analyses on that data and traces its answers back to the evidence. In a blog post on Monday, Nominal said better AI models alone will not produce better machines. A design can look right on paper and still fail once engineers build and test it. “In engineering, physics gets a vote,” the company wrote.
Nominal gives three customer examples. At Anduril Industries, more than 300 engineers use it. Analysis that took five to six hours now happens in near real time. HII cut some analysis tasks from hours to minutes and some production test steps by about half.
Hypersonic aircraft maker Hermeus cut the time between uploading data and reviewing it by 80%. It designed and built its Quarterhorse Mk 1 aircraft in seven months. The US Air Force recently selected Nominal for a $71.2M Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI). The money supports capability development for Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the uncrewed jets designed to fly alongside piloted fighters.
Agents, new industries and more acquisitions Nominal will spend the new money on agents and applications across a machine’s whole life. They range from requirements checks and planning to scheduling and fleet health. It also plans to expand into new industries and regions, including through acquisitions. This year it bought Fid Labs, whose team is building its agents.
It also bought Pull Systems, which takes the platform into the car industry. Nominal announced the Pull Systems deal on 6 November. Nominal started in 2022. Its headquarters are in Austin, and it has offices in Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Washington, D.C. and London. “Over the next five years, companies that effectively bring AI into their engineering workflows will have a real competitive advantage,” McCord said.
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