Carl Pei has announced his next venture and it is officially called Nothing—literally. Nothing calls itself a “new forward-thinking consumer technology company based in London” and while that in itself doesn’t reveal much detail, I am sure, many would be glad just by the fact that the former OnePlus co-founder isn’t leaving the world of consumer tech just yet. His forward-thinking approach in the consumer tech space also seems well intact which is to say, ‘Nothing’ holds a lot of promise—and potential.
“It’s been a while since anything interesting happened in tech,” Carl said in a statement adding, “it is time for a fresh breeze of change.”
Under Carl’s leadership, Nothing will work to “remove barriers between people and technology to create a seamless digital future,” through smart devices. What kind of smart devices exactly, we can’t say for sure yet, though it is confirmed that Nothing will launch its first smart devices in the first half of this year, so it won’t be long before we start seeing more information start to trickle in.
An interesting thing to note is that some of the words that Nothing—and by extension Carl—is using to seemingly tease its upcoming products sound a lot like—or at least they echo similar sentiments—what has already been said (and done) by a certain company called ‘Essential’ which was founded by Android creator Andy Rubin.
“We believe that the best technology is beautiful, yet natural and intuitive to use. When sufficiently advanced, it should fade into the background and feel like nothing.”
True, it’s all speculation for now, but many in the industry have speculated that ambient computing is the future. Essential essentially tried to toy around with that concept, until it couldn’t, and shut shop. If Nothing is indeed looking to go down that road, it would still be a risk, but again, a risk worth taking. It would be interesting to see what shape and course Nothing takes going forward, in this or any other regard.
Today’s announcement comes shortly after Carl and team received a $7 million round in seed funding in December 2020 from iPod inventor Tony Fadell, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin and YouTuber Casey Neistat. CRED founder Kunal Shah has also invested in Carl’s new venture.
