Nominal Raises $240 Million at $3 Billion Valuation for AI Hardware Testing Platform

Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round and Insight Partners co-led it. The valuation is three times the $1 billion the company was given in March, when it announced a $155 million Series B extension led by Trae Stephens at Founders Fund. That earlier deal was pre-emptive, meaning the investor approached the company rather than the other way round, TechCrunch reported. Sequoia, General Catalyst and Lux Capital are also investors.

The pace of the repricing reflects investor appetite for software aimed at defence, energy and industrial systems, where testing physical equipment generates large volumes of sensor and telemetry data. Nominal's tools are built for engineers working on products such as aircraft, nuclear reactors and automated factories.

The four-year-old company says it has 80 commercial and government customers. One of the most prominent is Anduril, the defence contractor that Stephens co-founded. In October the US Air Force selected Nominal for a $71.2 million Strategic Funding Increase, or STRATFI, investment. The programme requires the recipient to secure matching money from sources outside the Air Force, which private rounds such as this one can help supply.

Chief executive and co-founder Cameron McCord is a former US Navy submarine officer and previously worked at Anduril.

The company did not say in the reports how it plans to spend the new capital. With two large rounds in eight months and a growing government contract base, the next test for Nominal is whether it can widen its customer list beyond the defence-technology circle around its early backers.