Nominal (hardware engineering software company)

McCord had been a U.S. Navy submarine officer and congressional liaison before managing a drone-defense product at AndurilAnduril IndustriesAnduril Industries is a defense technology company headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, United States, co-founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey and several former Palantir and Oculus employees. It develops autonomous drones, unmanned undersea vehicles, border surveillance towers, counter-drone systems, and the Lattice command-and-control software, and builds its own large-scale weapons manufacturing facilities. As of May 2026, the company was valued at $61 billion.Open the full entry, where fragmented tools made telemetry, sensor and video analysis difficult. While studying for his Harvard Business School MBA, he worked part-time as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Lux CapitalLux CapitalLux Capital is a U.S. venture capital firm founded in 2000 by Peter Hébert, Josh Wolfe and Robert Paull, with offices in New York and Silicon Valley. Focused on emerging science and technology, the firm backs companies in fields including life sciences, artificial intelligence, robotics, manufacturing, aerospace and defense through fund investments and by helping to found companies.Open the full entry and interviewed hardware technology leaders. He met Strauss, who had an aerospace background, at business school and recruited his MIT acquaintance Hoch. Strauss proposed the name from the launch phrase “All systems nominal.” Lux wrote the first investment check about a month before graduation; Sequoia’s company directory records 2022 as the formal founding year.⁠[4][1]

The three founders demonstrated an early hardware-in-the-loop prototype to a major satellite company in Los Angeles. Hoch corrected a data-source synchronization issue shortly before the demonstration, which led to an unpaid pilot. They hired four engineers and combined remote work with periodic development sessions in Austin, ending regularly scheduled Austin weeks at roughly 40 people. Hermeus later used Nominal for hardware-in-the-loop testing and field-data review during Quarterhorse Mark One’s May 2025 first flight, completing high-speed taxi and first flight within a two-hour runway window.⁠[4]

In April 2024, Nominal emerged from stealth with $27.5 million across a $7.5 million seed round led by Lux Capital with Founders FundFounders FundFounders Fund is a venture capital firm founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Peter Thiel and his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Run by partners who were entrepreneurs themselves, it argues that founders should keep more control and is known for betting on difficult technology projects in areas such as space, defense, and artificial intelligence. It was Palantir’s first institutional investor, has invested in SpaceX many times since 2008, and its other notable investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril; as of March 2026 it had raised nine early-stage funds and four growth funds.Open the full entry participation and a $20 million Series A led by General CatalystGeneral CatalystGeneral Catalyst (GC) is an investment firm founded in 2000 and headquartered in San Francisco, United States, created by Joel Cutler, David Fialkow and Bill Fitzgerald, that backs companies from the seed stage through growth.Open the full entry. Other investors included Haystack VC, XYZ Ventures, Human Capital, BoxGroup and Overmatch Ventures. Coverage identified Strauss as a former Lockheed MartinLockheed MartinLockheed Martin is an American aerospace and defense company whose main businesses include military aircraft, missile defense, rotary-wing aircraft and mission systems, and space systems.Open the full entry Space systems engineer and Hoch as a builder of data products for businesses and governments. Funding supported products, hiring, security and deployment capabilities.⁠[5]

On June 12, 2025, Nominal announced a $75 million Series B led by Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalSequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, investing from the seed stage through the growth stage. Its historical investments include Apple, Cisco, Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and Stripe; in 2021 it introduced the Sequoia Capital Fund structure, which can continue to hold public securities, and in 2023 its regional businesses became independent brands and partnerships.Open the full entry, with significant participation from Lightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture Partners backs companies from seed through late-stage financing. Its website distinguishes Lightspeed Management Company (LSVP) from Lightspeed India Partners (LSIP): the two are separately operated investment advisers, with the U.S., European, and Israeli offices belonging to LSVP and the India and Southeast Asia offices belonging to LSIP.Open the full entry and continued backing from Lux Capital, General Catalyst and Founders Fund. The company reported tenfold year-over-year revenue growth, sixfold customer growth and dozens of field deployments, without disclosing absolute revenue. Sequoia partners Alfred LinAlfred LinAlfred Lin is an American venture capitalist who has been a partner at Sequoia Capital since 2010 and, since November 2025, one of the firm’s co-stewards together with Pat Grady. Before joining Sequoia he was an executive at LinkExchange, Tellme Networks, and Zappos, companies acquired by Microsoft and Amazon; at Sequoia he has represented the firm on the boards of companies including Airbnb and DoorDash.Open the full entry and Anas Biad worked on the investment. The funding was intended to accelerate existing products and develop embedded and operational applications.⁠[6][7]

By June 2025, Nominal had two production products. Nominal Core was a collaborative cloud workbench for managing, monitoring and analyzing high-rate sensor data, logs, video and procedures in a time-aligned view. Nominal Connect, launched in 2025, allowed engineers to build hardware-in-the-loop applications and run automation and edge-processing code alongside physical assets or test stands. Together they connected data across prototype, production and operations.⁠[6][7]

On March 5, 2026, Nominal announced another $80 million at a $1 billion valuation, led by Founders Fund with support from Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Lux Capital, Red Glass Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. It reported sevenfold revenue growth over roughly ten months since Series B, more than tripling its team to 135 across Austin, New York, Los Angeles, Washington and London. It reported over 60 customers, including four of the five largest defense contractors globally. Priorities included Core and Connect, strategic acquisitions in the U.S. and Europe, and expansion into automotive, energy, manufacturing and robotics.⁠[8][9]

Nominal’s Air Force Test Center work began in 2023 with a Phase I STTR alongside the Test Pilot School, moving to Phase II in April 2024 with automated flight-test data review. On April 14, 2026, the company announced a sole-source, multi-year IDIQ contract with a $53 million ceiling as an SBIR Phase III transition. It permits multiple task orders for Air Force and Defense Department access to the platform; the ceiling is not equivalent to booked revenue. The release also identifies a separate Phase III contract supporting the Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray.⁠[10]

On April 30, 2026, co-founder Jason Hoch announced Nominal’s first strategic acquisition, Fid Labs. Fid Labs connected AI agents to development environments, simulators and physical hardware for sensor integration, specification searches, error triage and integration code. Founder Adam Wolnikowski joined as AI Product Lead, responsible for strategy, roadmap and team. The initial plan was Analyst inside Nominal Core, using engineering-domain context to analyze data.⁠[9]

The AeroVironment partnership announced in September connected test-data capture, cross-team review and traceable records from engineering tests through end-of-line manufacturing checks as production expanded across programs and facilities. The webpage is dated September 14, while the release body says September 8. On September 15, North Wind brought Nominal into its Technology Alliance and ASCENT digital test environment, bringing telemetry, sensors, logs and video from propulsion, hypersonics and flight-system facilities into a shared data environment.⁠[11][12]

On October 6, Nominal announced Shawn Scully as GM of Hardware Intelligence, leading AI strategy and platform intelligence. He had been an early leader in AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry’s Machine Intelligence group and led product and go-to-market at Turi before its acquisition by Apple. Igor Stanko joined as VP of Product after building cloud data products at MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry, Firebolt and Cockroach Labs. In November, the company’s public account also announced former RampRampRamp is a corporate financial technology company founded in 2019 by Eric Glyman, Karim Atiyeh and Gene Lee. It provides corporate cards, expense reimbursement, bill payments, procurement and finance automation. Glyman and Atiyeh became co-CEOs in June 2026.Open the full entry employee Akash Wadawadigi as Head of Growth and Monetization.⁠[13][14]

On October 9, Nominal introduced its first purpose-built AI agent, Analyst, in public preview. It finds relevant data, builds analytical views, searches engineering files and executes computations, while engineers can inspect results, challenge assumptions and direct subsequent work. The company described early use at Wisk Aero for battery-verification document changes and automation updates, and at Mach Industries for understanding unfamiliar flight data. These are specific customer experiences, rather than universal performance results.⁠[15]

On October 26, Nominal announced selection for AFWERX’s Strategic Funding Increase program, a $71.2 million package comprising $30 million in private matching and $41.2 million in government funding across Air Force and Navy programs. Work covers Collaborative Combat Aircraft, AFWERX, the Air Force Test Pilot School and the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons, supporting flight-test and telemetry collection, organization, analysis and sharing. The release also describes existing work on DARPA CyPhER Forge, automated Test Pilot School analysis and the Navy’s EPIC Phase I autonomy demonstration. The package is not entirely government contract funding.⁠[16]

On November 6, Nominal announced its acquisition of Pull Systems, extending into automotive. Pull Systems had developed the Workbench telemetry platform with Porsche and other Volkswagen Group brands for field monitoring, quality and service teams after new-vehicle launches. Henry Furman and Emanuele Macchi joined Nominal, with Furman focused on its developer platform and Macchi contributing to Analyst. The announcement did not disclose a purchase price.⁠[17][14]

On November 9, Nominal announced a $240 million Series C at a $3 billion valuation, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and co-led by Insight PartnersInsight PartnersInsight Partners is a venture capital and private equity firm founded in New York in 1995 by Jeff Horing and Jerry Murdock, investing in software and technology companies from early through late stages. As of December 31, 2025, its website reported over $90 billion in regulatory assets under management and investments in more than 900 companies.Open the full entry. Other major investors were Lux Capital, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Avenir Growth Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Salesforce VenturesSalesforce VenturesSalesforce Ventures is Salesforce’s corporate venture capital arm. Active since 2009, it backs companies from seed through growth across enterprise software, cloud infrastructure, data, security and AI. Salesforce supplies all of its capital.Open the full entry, M13, D. E. ShawD. E. Shaw & Co.D. E. Shaw & Co. (the D. E. Shaw group) is a global investment and technology development firm headquartered in New York. Founded in 1988 by computer scientist David E. Shaw, it was an early pioneer of computational finance and systematic investing, and its businesses span multi-strategy hedge funds, private markets, active equity and multi-asset class strategies. As of September 1, 2026, it had more than US$115 billion in investment and committed capital.Open the full entry Ventures, Deployment Capital, Avra, Red Glass Ventures, Carpenter Capital, Audacious, PSP Growth, Overmatch Ventures, XYZ Ventures, Haystack and Brave Capital. Planned uses included agents and applications for requirements verification, planning, scheduling and fleet health, alongside industry and regional expansion through acquisitions.⁠[3]

The Series C release said more than 80 commercial and government organizations used Nominal, including five of the seven largest defense contractors. At Anduril, over 300 engineers used the platform, with some analyses previously taking five to six hours completed near real time. An HII pilot reduced certain analyses from hours to minutes and roughly halved some production test steps. Hermeus reduced time from data upload to review by 80% while designing and building Quarterhorse Mk 1 in seven months. These are specific cases described in the release, rather than universal platform benchmarks.⁠[3]

Nominal for Developers offers REST, Python and TypeScript SDKs, a PostgreSQL-compatible SQL endpoint and MCP so engineers and custom agents can use the same data with units, calibration and provenance. The site lists connections to Grafana, Tableau, Superset, MATLAB, Simulink and NI tools, plus open-source Instro. Deployment options include managed cloud, customer cloud accounts, on-premises and disconnected environments. Published performance figures distinguish a 15-million-point-per-second load-test peak, over 10 million points per second sustained with tuned batching, and 200 ms p95 live-view latency for windows of ten minutes or less, each with its stated conditions.⁠[18]

The security page lists single- or multi-tenant AWSAmazon Web ServicesAmazon Web Services (AWS) is the cloud computing business of Amazon. Launched in July 2002, it made its public debut with the Amazon S3 storage service on March 14, 2006, and has since added hundreds of services, including Amazon EC2; its segment net sales were about $46.0 billion in the third quarter of 2026.Open the full entry GovCloud, customers’ AWS/Azure/GCP accounts, and on-premises or air-gapped deployments. Controls include export-control markings, regional data residency, role permissions, audit trails, single sign-on and automated provisioning. It marks SOC 2 Type II as audited and Cyber Essentials Plus 3.3 as certified, and states that all 110 NIST SP 800-171 controls have been assessed for CMMC Level 2. The latter does not itself state that CMMC Level 2 certification has been awarded. These are the company’s published security-status claims.⁠[19]

The official website is https://nominal.io/ (opens in a new window), with developer documentation at https://dev.nominal.io/ (opens in a new window). It links to LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry (https://www.linkedin.com/company/nominal-inc (opens in a new window)), X (https://x.com/Nominal_io (opens in a new window)) and YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry (https://www.youtube.com/@nominal-io (opens in a new window)). The November 2026 release lists Austin headquarters and offices in Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Washington and London; the 2025 release had identified Los Angeles as headquarters. Connections include the three founders, acquired companies Fid Labs and Pull Systems, investors, and customers such as Anduril, Hermeus, HII, AeroVironment and North Wind.⁠[2][3][6][9][17][11][12]