Founders Fund Leads $80M B-2 Into Nominal | Trae Stephens, Cameron McCord

**Trae Stephens** (0:00)
Nominal is like one of these examples of, you look at the ROI, and you're like, okay, this isn't a nice to have, this is actually like saving us money, it's creating efficiencies in the business.

**Cameron McCord** (0:08)
If you are growing, then you're probably undervalued. I like, frankly fell in love with this problem, and was exposed to it was when I was at Anduril in the early days. So this was when Anduril was a much, much smaller company, like around 100 people. Wake up really early, we would go to Apple Valley, California for training.

**Trae Stephens** (0:23)
I was like, the trailer in the desert.

**Cameron McCord** (0:24)
The trailer in the desert. You wake up super early before, you know, before the sun comes up, pack a lot of these Anduril Interceptor drone and the tower system and you drive up. Set up in a trailer, you get like Wi-Fi pucks. It was really hard to get. That group of humans at Anduril, I think has gone on to start incredible companies, new products. Like it was just an awesome group. Really, really smart people.

**Molly O'Shea** (0:42)
I heard you barely even touched your $75 million Series B.

**Trae Stephens** (0:47)
You know what's better than $75 million? $155 million. Move fast and break things. If you move fast and break things, you're also breaking people. People are going to get hurt. I would say it's not magic. It's sorcery.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:11)
Cameron, Trae, welcome to Sourcery.

**Cameron McCord** (1:14)
Thank you for having us. Pumped to be here.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:16)
Well, it's been just 10 months since you were last on Sourcery for your $75 million Series B. Now you're back for your $80 million led by Founders Fund. What happened?

**Cameron McCord** (1:32)
I always like to say, if you are growing, then you're probably undervalued.
We were approached by the Founders Fund team who's been on Nominal's cap table really from the beginning over the sort of December holidays with a really, really attractive offer to lead a financing. And I was sort of thinking about it in terms of, I think you always want the sort of external realities to match kind of the internal momentum that we were feeling at Nominal over the course of 2025 We had really a breakout year. And so when the Founders Fund team kind of approached us with a really good proposition of leading a financing, it just made all the sense in the world. So yeah, we're pumped.

**Molly O'Shea** (2:19)
Might I add, your last financing happened in 10 days. This one was preempted. So there's some sort of magic here working here. What do you think that is?

**Cameron McCord** (2:29)
I mean, I really think we sometimes joke internally at Nominal, but I think we're building in a time where it's hard to find a tailwind in the industry that I think we are not benefiting from. So I think reindustrialization, physical AI, people getting back to building hardware in a serious way, all of those greatly benefit the business that Nominal is building. I think really in 2025, we saw the hockey stick inflection point in the curve. A lot of that, I think, cracking commercial motion, going from a product to really finding product market fit and starting to scale that. And I think the good investors who are around the table can spot that. So.

**Molly O'Shea** (3:19)
And Trae.

**Trae Stephens** (3:19)
I would say it's not magic.

**Molly O'Shea** (3:21)
It's not?

**Trae Stephens** (3:21)
It's sorcery.

**Molly O'Shea** (3:25)
Good, good, good, good.

**Trae Stephens** (3:26)
We love that.

**Molly O'Shea** (3:27)
I'm going to clip that out.

**Trae Stephens** (3:29)
I am a dad.

**Molly O'Shea** (3:32)
Well, Trae, you've been tracking and Founders Fund has been tracking Nominal for quite some time. You're involved in the seed round. So what exactly are you tracking throughout time to make this sort of preemptive decision?

**Trae Stephens** (3:44)
Yeah. I mean, we're in kind of a unique position in that we invest in a lot of industrial companies. We don't have a thesis, but we just feel like this is an area that needs increased attention. But beyond that, we're also, we've incubated multiple companies that are kind of roughly in this sector that are customers of Nominal. So we had an inside view on what was going on. And I think that gave us the ability to say, wow, I mean, we're hearing a lot from companies that we started ourselves, from portfolio companies, about how important and necessary this software stack is. And that enabled us to lean in. Not only that, but, you know, Cam was actually at Anduril for a couple of years in the very early days. And so he and I have known each other for a while. He has a strong relationship with many of the partners on the team. And so we were just kind of in a position where we had an information flow. And we knew that it was a time that we wanted to come in and make a high conviction, highly concentrated bet.