Seattle lands another $1B startup: Here’s the latest arrival in the industrial AI boom

Nominal CEO Cameron McCord says Seattle’s concentration to tech talent and key partners attracted the company. (Photos via Nominal) Seattle’s emergence as a hub for companies building the next generation of industrial technology is drawing another high-profile startup. Los Angeles-based Nominal, whose software helps engineers build, test and validate complex hardware systems, is establishing a permanent Seattle office as it ramps up hiring and looks for a larger home in the region.

The nearly 4-year-old company currently employs 11 people at a downtown Seattle co-working space, and expects to more than double that number by the end of the year. Nominal’s Stephen Slattery will lead the Seattle office. The company is also relocating Head of Product Stephen Slattery, the former director of technical operations at defense tech giant Anduril Industries, from Los Angeles to Seattle to oversee the new office.

Employing about 200 employees globally, Nominal also operates offices in Austin, New York, Washington, D.C., and London. Seattle’s concentration of tech and aerospace talent, along with proximity to key partners and customers, attracted the fast-growing company. Nominal CEO Cameron McCord said Seattle is one of only a handful of U.S.

markets with a deep concentration of engineers experienced in solving large-scale infrastructure and reliability problems. Seattle’s aerospace heritage also appealed to the company. “Some of the magic of Nominal is putting them in one room,” McCord told GeekWire.

The company boasts 75 customers, about half of which are in the defense sector. It also sells its software to companies in the energy, robotics and automotive arenas. The Seattle expansion comes just months after Nominal raised an $80 million venture capital round led by Founders Fund at a $1 billion valuation, part of a growing trend of companies serving industries where artificial intelligence is accelerating innovation in the physical world.

“Nominal exists to help these engineering teams rethink their data supply chain: the end-to-end flow from instrumentation through acquisition, storage, analysis, reporting, and into the decisions that shape the next design,” the company wrote in the funding announcement. Seattle has increasingly become a landing spot for companies operating at the intersection of AI and the physical world, while some of the region’s fastest-growin…