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"Physics gets a vote." Cameron McCord learned this viscerally in his time at Anduril. "Simulate everything" became industry gospel, but it turns out testing is still critical in hardware. That experience became the thesis behind Nominal. He and co-founders Jason Hoch and Bryce Strauss built Nominal around testing because... show more

Alfred Lin

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14,724 views • 5 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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BREAKING: Nominal Hits $1B Valuation — Founders Fund Preempts $80M B-2 Acceleration Round Just 10 months after Nominal's $75M Series B led by Sequoia's Alfred Lin CEO Cameron McCord & Trae Stephens (Founders Fund + Anduril) join Sourcery to discuss: - $155M raised in 10 months, nearly $200M total funding - Early validation at Anduril - 4 of the 5 largest defense primes are now customers - Reducing major hardware test campaigns by 50–60% (which can cost ~$3M per day) - Strategy: platform expansion, potential M&A, and aggressive hiring - Anduril LORE All systems Nominal. Cameron McCord Trae Stephens Alfred Lin 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Trae Stephens & Cameron McCord (01:11) Nominal raises $80M from Founders Fund (03:32) Why Founders Fund made the investment (05:22) Palantir, FF, Anduril: Trae is a "Slashie" (07:14) Nominal: the GitHub for hardware testing (12:33) Why Sequoia believed Nominal’s TAM was much bigger (15:36) Inside Nominal’s growing defense customer base (17:32) Why government hardware testing still relies on Excel and MATLAB (22:22) Cutting hardware testing time by up to 60% (26:55) How AI changes hardware development (37:22) Why the government is backing new defense tech companies (33:35) Nominal's sales strategy (45:44) Competing with legacy software giants (46:24) Recruiting top engineers (50:56) Early Anduril LORE: Stories from the desert

BREAKING: Nominal Hits $1B Valuation — Founders Fund Preempts $80M B-2 Acceleration Round Just 10 months after Nominal's $75M Series B led by Sequoia's Alfred Lin CEO Cameron McCord & Trae Stephens (Founders Fund + Anduril) join Sourcery to discuss: - $155M raised in 10 months, nearly $200M total funding - Early validation at Anduril - 4 of the 5 largest defense primes are now customers - Reducing major hardware test campaigns by 50–60% (which can cost ~$3M per day) - Strategy: platform expansion, potential M&A, and aggressive hiring - Anduril LORE All systems Nominal. Cameron McCord Trae Stephens Alfred Lin 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Trae Stephens & Cameron McCord (01:11) Nominal raises $80M from Founders Fund (03:32) Why Founders Fund made the investment (05:22) Palantir, FF, Anduril: Trae is a "Slashie" (07:14) Nominal: the GitHub for hardware testing (12:33) Why Sequoia believed Nominal’s TAM was much bigger (15:36) Inside Nominal’s growing defense customer base (17:32) Why government hardware testing still relies on Excel and MATLAB (22:22) Cutting hardware testing time by up to 60% (26:55) How AI changes hardware development (37:22) Why the government is backing new defense tech companies (33:35) Nominal's sales strategy (45:44) Competing with legacy software giants (46:24) Recruiting top engineers (50:56) Early Anduril LORE: Stories from the desert

Molly O’Shea

139,078 views • 5 months ago

THIS GUY BUILT REAL FLYING SWORD DRONES AND CONTROLS THEM WITH HAND GESTURES fan shisan is a physics student in chengdu who coded and built flying drones shaped like actual swords he controls them entirely with hand gestures. no controller or a phone. just his hands wave your hand and the sword follows. point and it flies where you direct it. multiple swords in the air at the same time responding to different gestures he built the gesture recognition system HIMSELF and coded the flight control algorithms. designed the drone hardware in the shape of swords. the gesture tracking uses sensors that read the position and movement of his hands in real time and translate them into flight commands for each drone independently he even built one large enough to ride on a physics student with coding skills just brought something straight out of a kung fu movie into the real world the line between science fiction and side projects is getting thinner every month

THIS GUY BUILT REAL FLYING SWORD DRONES AND CONTROLS THEM WITH HAND GESTURES fan shisan is a physics student in chengdu who coded and built flying drones shaped like actual swords he controls them entirely with hand gestures. no controller or a phone. just his hands wave your hand and the sword follows. point and it flies where you direct it. multiple swords in the air at the same time responding to different gestures he built the gesture recognition system HIMSELF and coded the flight control algorithms. designed the drone hardware in the shape of swords. the gesture tracking uses sensors that read the position and movement of his hands in real time and translate them into flight commands for each drone independently he even built one large enough to ride on a physics student with coding skills just brought something straight out of a kung fu movie into the real world the line between science fiction and side projects is getting thinner every month

Om Patel

307,609 views • 3 months ago

When I sold my software company in 2010 and became an angel investor, one word could smother a pitch on the spot: “Hardware”. A hardware component made you close to unfundable. The VCs called you a hybrid company, and it wasn't a compliment. The refrain was: “Hardware is hard, hardware is slow, hardware eats cash and stretches timelines. We want pure software”. That was the era. It took two shocks to break the spell. First, COVID broke supply chains, and soon everyone in Washington was doing the math on where things actually get made. For example, the US hasn’t produced tungsten domestically since 2015 . (Aside: this is changing, cc Taylor Sulik ⛏️ ) Rare earth magnets: almost all bought from countries that may or may not be on our side. The ability to make critical materials at home was a national capability that we’d spent decades letting rot. That lit a fire under a lot of folks. Then AI showed up and knocked the legs out from under pure software entirely. The nightmare scenario for a lot of SaaS companies is now the next model dropping and a customer rebuilding your product in-house. So the same VCs who said "we don't want any hardware in this" are now asking founders where the hardware is. Which brings me to moats. A moat has always been a rebuild-time question: how long would it take a well-funded competitor to rebuild what you have? Software used to buy you years. AI is shrinking that number toward months, and a moat measured in months is more like a wooden fence. The physical world doesn't compress that way, since time is baked into its advantages. A factory takes three to five years to stand up regardless of how smart your tools get. Then permits, construction, supply chains, testing data… Another part is that AI trains on the written-down world, and high-moat physical knowledge lives largely offline… public AI models have not yet ingested it, and no prompt can reproduce the underlying empirical record. Anyway, hardware is still damn hard. And that's exactly the point.

When I sold my software company in 2010 and became an angel investor, one word could smother a pitch on the spot: “Hardware”. A hardware component made you close to unfundable. The VCs called you a hybrid company, and it wasn't a compliment. The refrain was: “Hardware is hard, hardware is slow, hardware eats cash and stretches timelines. We want pure software”. That was the era. It took two shocks to break the spell. First, COVID broke supply chains, and soon everyone in Washington was doing the math on where things actually get made. For example, the US hasn’t produced tungsten domestically since 2015 . (Aside: this is changing, cc Taylor Sulik ⛏️ ) Rare earth magnets: almost all bought from countries that may or may not be on our side. The ability to make critical materials at home was a national capability that we’d spent decades letting rot. That lit a fire under a lot of folks. Then AI showed up and knocked the legs out from under pure software entirely. The nightmare scenario for a lot of SaaS companies is now the next model dropping and a customer rebuilding your product in-house. So the same VCs who said "we don't want any hardware in this" are now asking founders where the hardware is. Which brings me to moats. A moat has always been a rebuild-time question: how long would it take a well-funded competitor to rebuild what you have? Software used to buy you years. AI is shrinking that number toward months, and a moat measured in months is more like a wooden fence. The physical world doesn't compress that way, since time is baked into its advantages. A factory takes three to five years to stand up regardless of how smart your tools get. Then permits, construction, supply chains, testing data… Another part is that AI trains on the written-down world, and high-moat physical knowledge lives largely offline… public AI models have not yet ingested it, and no prompt can reproduce the underlying empirical record. Anyway, hardware is still damn hard. And that's exactly the point.

Adam Rossi

11,855 views • 1 month ago

At the University of Strathclyde, students and researchers are using AMD Zynq RFSoC and FPGA technology to design flexible, software-defined radio systems. Through the AMD University Program, access to hardware, software, and support is helping make advanced signal processing more accessible and preparing students for real-world industry applications in wireless and beyond. From classrooms to industry, the impact is already visible, with graduates developing careers built on their AMD-based learning.

At the University of Strathclyde, students and researchers are using AMD Zynq RFSoC and FPGA technology to design flexible, software-defined radio systems. Through the AMD University Program, access to hardware, software, and support is helping make advanced signal processing more accessible and preparing students for real-world industry applications in wireless and beyond. From classrooms to industry, the impact is already visible, with graduates developing careers built on their AMD-based learning.

AMD

17,679 views • 3 months ago

Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire wrote a private hardware manifesto arguing that over the next 25 years, most of the money will be made in hardware: "Every software revolution is preceded by a hardware revolution." "To have the iOS App Store that enabled Uber, DoorDash, and all of these great companies - you needed to have the iPhone." "This AI revolution - we're seeing what it can do from the software layer, but it's still limited by hardware." "The hardware we were doing for a long time was all following Moore's Law. It was all branching out of this decision in the mid-1950s to go all in on the silicon supply chain." "That has created magic, and there's still a couple orders of magnitude of juice to squeeze, but we’re hitting fundamental physics limits - Dennard scaling, things like that." "I think this tech tree is branching into humanoid robots, into silicon photonics, into orbital data centers - all of these new hardware areas where there's going to be 20+ years of progress." "There's going to be incredible businesses built on the back of this. And a lot of dumpster fires."

Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire wrote a private hardware manifesto arguing that over the next 25 years, most of the money will be made in hardware: "Every software revolution is preceded by a hardware revolution." "To have the iOS App Store that enabled Uber, DoorDash, and all of these great companies - you needed to have the iPhone." "This AI revolution - we're seeing what it can do from the software layer, but it's still limited by hardware." "The hardware we were doing for a long time was all following Moore's Law. It was all branching out of this decision in the mid-1950s to go all in on the silicon supply chain." "That has created magic, and there's still a couple orders of magnitude of juice to squeeze, but we’re hitting fundamental physics limits - Dennard scaling, things like that." "I think this tech tree is branching into humanoid robots, into silicon photonics, into orbital data centers - all of these new hardware areas where there's going to be 20+ years of progress." "There's going to be incredible businesses built on the back of this. And a lot of dumpster fires."

TBPN

218,127 views • 5 months ago

Meta spent $40 billion and 10 years trying to make hand tracking feel natural. This guy did it with Claude in a weekend. No code written. No team. No hardware. He described what he wanted, Claude built it. The app tracks every finger, every joint, every movement live on his laptop. Physics bend around his hands in real time. The $40B industry just got embarrassed by one person with a Claude subscription. Everything you need to start building like this is in the article above.

Meta spent $40 billion and 10 years trying to make hand tracking feel natural. This guy did it with Claude in a weekend. No code written. No team. No hardware. He described what he wanted, Claude built it. The app tracks every finger, every joint, every movement live on his laptop. Physics bend around his hands in real time. The $40B industry just got embarrassed by one person with a Claude subscription. Everything you need to start building like this is in the article above.

Anatoli Kopadze

190,075 views • 3 months ago

"Hardware is hard." - Elon Musk Thrive Capital Partner Philip Clark on why investing in hardware has never been more attractive: "Hardware businesses can be enormously durable once you get them off the ground." "It's really hard to imagine who is possibly going to disrupt SpaceX at this point." "It's harder because there is often an operational aspect to hardware investing, where I don't just have to build a product and press a 'ship the binary' button on a computer." "I actually have to have a manufacturing line and a deployment line that gets this out into the real world." " When you get over the hump of these really, really hard industries and problems—you actually have built something at scale that is very hard to quickly replicate."

"Hardware is hard." - Elon Musk Thrive Capital Partner Philip Clark on why investing in hardware has never been more attractive: "Hardware businesses can be enormously durable once you get them off the ground." "It's really hard to imagine who is possibly going to disrupt SpaceX at this point." "It's harder because there is often an operational aspect to hardware investing, where I don't just have to build a product and press a 'ship the binary' button on a computer." "I actually have to have a manufacturing line and a deployment line that gets this out into the real world." " When you get over the hump of these really, really hard industries and problems—you actually have built something at scale that is very hard to quickly replicate."

sourcery

11,398 views • 2 months ago

"You earn the right to stand the night watch." - Cameron McCord Cameron McCord. Founder and CEO of Nominal. Submarine officer turned founder building the software stack for the physical AI era. New episode of Knuckle Up with Nakul is live ↓ 00:00 Who is Cameron McCord? 01:34 What did 484 days underwater teach him about leadership? 10:36 How do you "earn the right to stand the night watch"? 16:28 What was so special about Anduril’s culture? 28:39 What is the "power of ambiguity"? 31:29 How does Cameron think about recruiting? 37:39 Can you recruit “killers” who are also low ego? 46:50 What was the broken old way of testing hardware? 50:50 How do you actually crack selling to the government? 55:12 How did Nominal land four of the five largest defense primes? 1:01:33 What does "physical AI" actually mean? 1:18:14 What is Cameron still working on in his inner game? 1:23:22 Quickfire: military movies, leadership books, and a favorite office? 1:25:07 What advice would Cameron give to his 25-year-old self?

"You earn the right to stand the night watch." - Cameron McCord Cameron McCord. Founder and CEO of Nominal. Submarine officer turned founder building the software stack for the physical AI era. New episode of Knuckle Up with Nakul is live ↓ 00:00 Who is Cameron McCord? 01:34 What did 484 days underwater teach him about leadership? 10:36 How do you "earn the right to stand the night watch"? 16:28 What was so special about Anduril’s culture? 28:39 What is the "power of ambiguity"? 31:29 How does Cameron think about recruiting? 37:39 Can you recruit “killers” who are also low ego? 46:50 What was the broken old way of testing hardware? 50:50 How do you actually crack selling to the government? 55:12 How did Nominal land four of the five largest defense primes? 1:01:33 What does "physical AI" actually mean? 1:18:14 What is Cameron still working on in his inner game? 1:23:22 Quickfire: military movies, leadership books, and a favorite office? 1:25:07 What advice would Cameron give to his 25-year-old self?

Nakul Mandan

457,711 views • 2 months ago

The vision behind $HABE is no longer a theory. It’s real. It’s active. And now, you can see it for yourself. The HABEVERSE is more than a platform. It’s a system built to move ideas into the real world, and it runs on four powerhouse zones: The HABE Innovation Zone: where raw ideas are shaped into structured proposals using HABEAI and a proven process that goes from seed to launch. The HABE Voting Zone: Where your vote helps decide what gets built, and every action earns $HABE. The HABE Marketplace: A new way to invest. Back real products, grow with innovation, and build a portfolio that reflects what you believe in. The HABE Profile Zone: Your personal dashboard. Everything you do is tracked and managed in one place. This prototype is just the first glimpse of what’s coming, and what’s already working. 👉 Check out the prototype on Figma: Start where it still counts: Final hour before the price shifts.

HABE

14,864 views • 1 year ago

Rumor has it there's new hardware moving through Night City. Watch the Commodore 77 come to life, hand-painted by the artists at AK Studio in an exclusive collaboration with the Cyberpunk 2077 and Official Commodore® teams. Inspired by Cyberpunk 2077 and built on the legendary Commodore 64 Ultimate, this collector's piece is where iconic hardware meets extraordinary craftsmanship. Experience a world-exclusive fusion of art and technology. Pre-order your Commodore 77 before the corps shut it down.

Rumor has it there's new hardware moving through Night City. Watch the Commodore 77 come to life, hand-painted by the artists at AK Studio in an exclusive collaboration with the Cyberpunk 2077 and Official Commodore® teams. Inspired by Cyberpunk 2077 and built on the legendary Commodore 64 Ultimate, this collector's piece is where iconic hardware meets extraordinary craftsmanship. Experience a world-exclusive fusion of art and technology. Pre-order your Commodore 77 before the corps shut it down.

Cyberpunk 2077

243,600 views • 12 hours ago

This is what happens when GTC lands in Taipei. 🇹🇼 Keynote reveals, hands-on demos, real connections, and Jensen fans everywhere. It's not just a conference. It's where the AI era gets built together — and the energy of the community proves it. Join us at our next GTC — grow your AI skills, network, and experience the vibe for yourself.

This is what happens when GTC lands in Taipei. 🇹🇼 Keynote reveals, hands-on demos, real connections, and Jensen fans everywhere. It's not just a conference. It's where the AI era gets built together — and the energy of the community proves it. Join us at our next GTC — grow your AI skills, network, and experience the vibe for yourself.

NVIDIA

48,345 views • 2 months ago

French guard Adam Ademna showed out all week for the World Team at Nike Hoop Summit. He discusses his first time in America, testing the NBA Draft waters and what's going into that decision and the young talent coming out of France:

French guard Adam Ademna showed out all week for the World Team at Nike Hoop Summit. He discusses his first time in America, testing the NBA Draft waters and what's going into that decision and the young talent coming out of France:

Krysten Peek

12,190 views • 4 months ago

Waterworld (1995) gets clowned for the budget and the chaos, but the commitment is undeniable. Real atolls built in the ocean, stunt work happening on actual water, and a fully realized drowned world. It swings big, and that ambition is part of the appeal.

Waterworld (1995) gets clowned for the budget and the chaos, but the commitment is undeniable. Real atolls built in the ocean, stunt work happening on actual water, and a fully realized drowned world. It swings big, and that ambition is part of the appeal.

cinesthetic.

1,479,607 views • 6 months ago

The year is 1999, drug dealer just became Governor. This criminal had a Budget of $800M for Power and road in his first year This is who you want to pay Taxes to in 2026? Ask yourselves where is the Power or the Road he built? Anyway. You'd learn lessons.

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Politrician

38,860 views • 11 months ago

INSTITUTIONS ARE STILL SCARED, AND THAT’S THE OPPORTUNITY The CEO of Tether says 2024 was just the first real year of institutional Bitcoin adoption. Most companies he meets still won’t touch BTC, not because it’s broken, but because they aren’t ready and don’t understand it yet. His point: $BTC is becoming a hedge against the chaos in the world, and the only real mistake is ignoring it without learning how it works. We’re early and institutions are still cautious. Education is the bottleneck - and that gap is exactly where the opportunity lives.

INSTITUTIONS ARE STILL SCARED, AND THAT’S THE OPPORTUNITY The CEO of Tether says 2024 was just the first real year of institutional Bitcoin adoption. Most companies he meets still won’t touch BTC, not because it’s broken, but because they aren’t ready and don’t understand it yet. His point: $BTC is becoming a hedge against the chaos in the world, and the only real mistake is ignoring it without learning how it works. We’re early and institutions are still cautious. Education is the bottleneck - and that gap is exactly where the opportunity lives.

CryptosRus

35,237 views • 9 months ago

What’s so frustrating is that Mayor Mamdani has an incredible story to tell. He and his family immigrated to America, achieved success, built wealth, and he became mayor of the nation’s largest city because of the opportunities this country provides. Instead, every chance he gets, this POS denigrates America. If America were truly the oppressive nation he describes, his own story wouldn’t have been possible. His life is proof that the American Dream is still real, yet he spends his time attacking the very country that made his success possible.

What’s so frustrating is that Mayor Mamdani has an incredible story to tell. He and his family immigrated to America, achieved success, built wealth, and he became mayor of the nation’s largest city because of the opportunities this country provides. Instead, every chance he gets, this POS denigrates America. If America were truly the oppressive nation he describes, his own story wouldn’t have been possible. His life is proof that the American Dream is still real, yet he spends his time attacking the very country that made his success possible.

Nicholas Giordano

160,564 views • 1 month ago

At 103, J.J. Corbett has seen it all. KKK marching through his community. A lynching in Mulberry. Segregation in the military he served. But he became one of the first Black paratroopers, taught for 30 years, and served on the school board. This is the legacy that built us. He refused to slow down. Neither will we. ✊🏿

At 103, J.J. Corbett has seen it all. KKK marching through his community. A lynching in Mulberry. Segregation in the military he served. But he became one of the first Black paratroopers, taught for 30 years, and served on the school board. This is the legacy that built us. He refused to slow down. Neither will we. ✊🏿

Ben Crump

11,882 views • 6 months ago

John: What's interesting about Ilya and SSI is that it's a venture-style bet: let the scientists experiment, maybe it will work out, and if it works it's huge. The expected value is high. What's crazy is that it's a venture-style bet at growth scale. And it's a massive amount of capital for something where the consensus is: "If he solves it, it's incredibly valuable, and he leap frogs everything. And if not, maybe he just gets lost in a sea of research and never really produces anything." Also: this type of capital deployment has been happening internally at Google for a long time, but it hasn't been that big of a deal because they have the engine for it.

John: What's interesting about Ilya and SSI is that it's a venture-style bet: let the scientists experiment, maybe it will work out, and if it works it's huge. The expected value is high. What's crazy is that it's a venture-style bet at growth scale. And it's a massive amount of capital for something where the consensus is: "If he solves it, it's incredibly valuable, and he leap frogs everything. And if not, maybe he just gets lost in a sea of research and never really produces anything." Also: this type of capital deployment has been happening internally at Google for a long time, but it hasn't been that big of a deal because they have the engine for it.

TBPN

71,508 views • 8 months ago

People often ask how did the Unitree robots get so good all of a sudden. It wasn't all of a sudden, and it's because they ship their hardware and open source their SDKs. Arguably these robots are nearly useless out of the box, but you have full dev control of them. Because of that, the hardware has become a very popular R&D platform with an ecosystem around it and the Unitree G1 is undoubtedly an order of magnitude better than it could ever be at this point if Unitree was instead just doing quiet internal dev of both the hardware and software. Too many hardware companies for really cool products that seek to be community-driven (robots, AR glasses...etc) desire to make a profitable walled garden and their greed just ends up walling out developers and their product gets outpaced by the G1s of the world.

People often ask how did the Unitree robots get so good all of a sudden. It wasn't all of a sudden, and it's because they ship their hardware and open source their SDKs. Arguably these robots are nearly useless out of the box, but you have full dev control of them. Because of that, the hardware has become a very popular R&D platform with an ecosystem around it and the Unitree G1 is undoubtedly an order of magnitude better than it could ever be at this point if Unitree was instead just doing quiet internal dev of both the hardware and software. Too many hardware companies for really cool products that seek to be community-driven (robots, AR glasses...etc) desire to make a profitable walled garden and their greed just ends up walling out developers and their product gets outpaced by the G1s of the world.

Harrison Kinsley

816,066 views • 11 months ago

Most of the market is priced for a world that's coming to an end. Traditional software, legacy platforms, much of the SaaS layer of the S&P 500… all built on the assumption that humans will remain the primary customers. AI agents don't buy software the way we do. They don't need dashboards, subscriptions, or logins. And once the buyer changes, so does everything built around them. The investable opportunity ahead is the agentic economy… what gets built for agents as customers. That's where the next wave of capital ends up, and most people aren't positioned for it.

Most of the market is priced for a world that's coming to an end. Traditional software, legacy platforms, much of the SaaS layer of the S&P 500… all built on the assumption that humans will remain the primary customers. AI agents don't buy software the way we do. They don't need dashboards, subscriptions, or logins. And once the buyer changes, so does everything built around them. The investable opportunity ahead is the agentic economy… what gets built for agents as customers. That's where the next wave of capital ends up, and most people aren't positioned for it.

Raoul Pal

214,773 views • 1 month ago