❯ Hardware testing software maker Nominal raises $240 million in Series C, tripling its valuation to $3 billion in eight months

A second raise in eight monthsOn November 9, Nominal announced a $240 million Series C at a $3 billion valuation, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Insight Partners. In March, Nominal announced an $80 million Series B-2 extension led by Founders Fund at a $1 billion valuation. The new round backs a push to take software originally built for hardware test teams into design, manufacturing, and operations.

From retrieving a memory card to monitoring a flight in real timeTests of aircraft, robots, and other hardware generate sensor readings, video, component versions, and test parameters. Nominal puts them on a common timeline so engineers can see what changed before and after an anomaly. In Nominal’s Odys Aviation case study, the flight test team previously retrieved data from storage cards after landing. With Nominal, the test site and headquarters could view the same sensor readings in flight and look up ground and flight tests in one catalog.

An AI assistant can refer back to the evidenceNominal says it serves more than 80 commercial and government organizations and has introduced Nominal Analyst. Engineers can ask it to identify unusual results, compare them with earlier runs, and assemble analysis they can check against the original records. Engineers still make key decisions and approve changes. The software can run in the cloud, on premises, or in isolated environments for teams that cannot send data to a public cloud.

Test evidence can follow a product into manufacturingOnce a machine goes into production, configuration and test records from its prototype can help diagnose similar problems on a production line. Nominal plans to offer more engineering applications on top of the same data platform, and customers can use its interfaces to build tools of their own. For Nominal, expansion into manufacturing and operations can put more of an existing customer’s work on the platform.

▮ SIGNALNominal already sits where engineering teams collect test data, which lets it carry traceable AI analysis into manufacturing and maintenance without asking customers to assemble a new dataset first.