Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei’s start-up, Nothing, has recently acquired Andy Rubin’s Essential to work together on creating a hardware ecosystem. The company recently raised $ 15 million through the Series A funding round. The funding is led by GV, a capital investment arm of Alphabet Inc.

Carl Pei waved goodbye to OnePlus last year, which was revealed through a blog post in the OnePlus community. Since then he has been working on his new hardware venture, Nothing, and aims to create an ecosystem of smart devices where all the products are connected.

Through an interview, Pei confirmed that an array of TWS earbuds will be the first products to be launched, which will be followed by a series of smart devices. The company raised $ 15 million from Series A funding, Alphabet Inc’s GV, formerly Google Ventures, led the funding.

Essential was founded in 2015 by Android creator Andy Rubin after he left Google. Essential could successfully release only one smartphone, PH1, which didn’t perform well in the market. Since then the company has failed to make a mark in the smartphone industry. Essential was working on a smartphone as a successor to PH1, named PH2, but could never go forward with it. The firm also promised smart devices based on Ambient OS but couldn’t deliver.

According to a report by 9TO5Google, Andy Rubin has given the intellectual property rights of Essential to Carl Pei’s Nothing, which includes all the trademarks, logo, and other Essential brand products.

With this partnership, it is unclear whether Essential will aim to enter the smartphone market. Nothing aims to release the first array of TWS earbuds later this year and this partnership will contribute towards the mutual objective of creating an ecosystem of smart devices.

It is speculated that Nothing’s acquisition of Essential is mainly because of the patents registered by the latter including ” Voice setup instructions” and “voice-enabled home setup” as these are essential when it comes to developing a smart ecosystem. There has been no official statement from Nothing regarding the timeline of the products.

Carl Pei has also invited users to invest in Nothing. This recipe was earlier used by Carl during his early days with OnePlus. This helps in involving the community and generating hype. Users from any country can invest in Nothing but the rules may vary. More details regarding the investment might be revealed once the investment page goes live.

The technology firm has raised $ 7 million through seed funding, which includes participants Kevin Lin(co-founder of Twitch), Steve Huffman(CEO of Reddit), Kunal Shah(CEO of Cred), Josh Buckley(CEO of Product Hunt), Liam Casey(Founder and CEO of PCH), and Casey Neistat(Youtuber).