Nominal, the first unified, real-time test stack for physical systems, has officially raised a sum of $75 million in Series B financing.
Led by Sequoia Capital, the round saw further participation coming from the likes of Lightspeed Venture Partners, as well as continued support from Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, and other investors.
More on that would reveal how this particular piece of funding delivers a rather strong validation to the work Nominal does in terms of supporting aerospace, defense, energy, and advanced manufacturing programs. In case you weren’t aware, Anduril Industries, Shield AI, the U.S. Air Force, and many more of such big names use Nominal for the purpose of analyzing hardware data, surfacing anomalies, and keeping critical hardware mission-ready.
“No one tests more hardware, or under higher stakes, than the U.S. Department of Defense. Nominal is already accelerating test outcomes and can help reduce the time required for flight and weapons testing—delivering credible capabilities to the warfighter faster” said Maj Gen (Ret) Evan Dertien, former commander of the U.S. Air Force Test Center.
To understand the significance of such a development; we must also take into account how, for decades, hardware testing innovation has lagged behind the speed of demand for new hardware products. We say so because incumbent tools, build for one-and-done verification in the 1980s-2000s, would assume products shipped every ten years, not every ten weeks.
While that was happening, spreadsheets, custom Python harnesses, and siloed software were also found as unable to keep pace with rapid design changes or field updates.
As if the need wasn’t urgent enough, thanks to reindustrialization, rising defense budgets, and global competition compress schedules, continuous real-time validation is now becoming more essential for than ever before.
“Test speed is the choke-point for hardware innovation,” said Alfred Lin, Partner at Sequoia Capital. “Nominal transforms testing from a constraint into a competitive advantage with an integrated platform that spans development through operations. We’re excited to partner with the Nominal team as they create and define this new software category that will power the next era of hardware.”
Against that given need, Nominal’s unified stack arrives on the scene bearing an ability to automate data capture, flag edge-case failures, and feed results straight into operations, regardless of whether it’s in a wind tunnel, on a flight line, or inside a contested environment.
The company’s excellence in facilitating these operations can also be understood once you consider it has, thus far, achieved 10× revenue growth year-over-year, 6× customer growth across aerospace, defense, energy, robotics, and manufacturing, as well as dozens of operational field deployments, from hypersonic materials testing to daily drone sorties.
Talk about Nominal’s technology on a slightly deeper level, the company currently offers two distinct production products i.e. Nominal Core and Nominal Connect.
Starting from Nominal Core, it happens to be a secure cloud workbench for managing, monitoring and analyzing high-rate sensor data, logs, video, and procedures in one time-aligned, collaborative view.
Turning our attention towards Nominal Connect, it would be an edge platform which allows engineers to build custom hardware-in-the-loop applications, and at the same time, run automation code connected to physical assets or test stands.
“We are in the business of making testing simpler, more efficient and cost effective for our customers,” said Cameron McCord, co-founder and CEO of Nominal. “Every hour our customers wait for a test results impacts their schedule and budget. Nominal pulls the sensor data, control logic, and pass-fail gates into one live workspace, so testing outcomes are available within minutes, not days. Lines keep moving, flight windows stay on the calendar, and engineering teams ship new hardware without adding headcount.”
