Investor-Operator Edge from Anduril Experience

Nominal is now valued at $1B after closing an $80M B-2 Acceleration Round led by Founders Fund, with participation from Sequoia, Lux Capital, and General Catalyst — just 10 months after Nominal’s $75M Series B led by Sequoia.

In this episode of Sourcery, Cameron McCord (Co-Founder & CEO, Nominal) and Trae Stephens (Partner, Founders Fund; Co-Founder & Chairman, Anduril) break down why the round was preemptive, what Founders Fund was tracking from inside its portfolio (including Anduril), and why Nominal is becoming core infrastructure for teams building mission-critical hardware — from aerospace and defense to autonomy, energy, and advanced manufacturing.

We get into the “GitHub for software-defined hardware” analogy, what’s broken in the current federal testing stack (yes: Excel + MATLAB + PDFs), how Nominal can cut major test campaigns by 50–60%, and why the real competition is bureaucracy + legacy incumbents. Cameron also shares how Nominal thinks about TAM expansion, dual-use strategy (and why Trae hates the term), strategic M&A, hiring 120–140+ people in 2026, and how AI changes the hardware engineering workflow (from post-test analysis to agentic parallelization).

All Systems Nominal.

Trae Stephens: https://x.com/traestephens

Cameron McCord: https://x.com/CameronLMcCord 

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊

YouTube : https://youtu.be/iPl4oYhhPjY

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery

• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!

https://www.sourcery.vc/

Disclosure

Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.

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) From Palantir to Anduril: Trae’s investor-operator journey

(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 stories from the desert