At BiBi, a sleek Indian fine-dining restaurant in Mayfair, Carl Pei gestures animatedly over a four-course lunch set menu. It is an unlikely backdrop for the future of smartphones, yet the 36-year-old founder and CEO of Nothing treats the occasion as part of a larger performance. Last year, Pei stirred an international debate when he told The Times UK that London’s Indian cuisine was better than India’s — a statement that went viral in one of Nothing’s key markets. Today, he insists the choice of BiBi, with its modern reinterpretations of traditional dishes, reinforces his point while offering a quiet metaphor for the company he has built: something familiar, yet strikingly different.
Pei’s attention quickly returns to his craft. From his pocket emerges a prototype of a yet-to-be-released Nothing phone. Displayed on its back is a pixelated egg — a digital Tamagotchi, designed to evolve based on Pei’s real-world activity. “I told it to make the Tamagotchi healthier the more steps I walk, and less healthy with more screen time,” he explains to The Times UK. Such whimsical innovation reflects Nothing’s approach to design: merging functionality with playful, user-driven interactivity.
Founded in 2020, Nothing has grown rapidly from a standing start to a “unicorn” valuation of $1.3 billion, with lifetime sales exceeding $1 billion, according to figures reported by The Times UK. Its first phone drew attention for its “glyph interface,” an LED system embedded in the rear that communicates notifications silently, even when the device is face down. The company has since expanded into headphones, smartwatches, and other consumer electronics. Its retail presence spans London, India, and the United States, and its devices have won multiple design and technology awards. Yet Pei insists that these milestones are merely a warm-up. “Less than 10 per cent of the UK knows we exist. There’s a long way to go,” he told The Times UK.
Born in Beijing in 1989 and raised in the United States and Sweden, Pei’s early life foreshadowed his entrepreneurial instincts. He describes a childhood split between a loud persona in Staten Island and a quieter, introspective side in Sweden. By age 12, he was already experimenting with money and building websites, including a briefly popular service that allowed people to download backup copies of games. Academic pressures at Stockholm School of Economics drove him to drop out, frustrated by a curriculum that seemed ill-suited for practical business ambitions.
Pei’s professional journey accelerated in China, where he worked at a smartphone company before co-founding OnePlus at age 24. By 2024, OnePlus had sales of around $5 billion, as noted in The Times UK. Despite this success, Pei departed in 2020, citing creative differences and a desire for independence. “They want to run a stable business, don’t take too much risk. I wanted a platform to shape the future of how people use technology,” he recalls. The move allowed him to found Nothing, where freedom, experimentation, and unconventional thinking define the company culture.
Running Nothing, however, has not been without its challenges. The launch of the first phone in 2022 was stressful enough to trigger an irregular heartbeat. Pei describes a recurring nightmare in which he calls a staff meeting to announce the company’s failure. A two-day break of nightclubbing in China helped reset his resilience. “I think a lot of stress desensitises you. These days I’m pretty relaxed. I bounce back a lot faster,” he says, smiling over a glass of champagne at lunch, as reported by The Times UK.
Pei is also candid about the role he plays as the public face of Nothing. Recognized on the streets, he now often takes Ubers instead of the London Underground to avoid unwanted attention. Yet he sees his visibility as temporary: “Ideally, the strength of a business is when the founders are not needed. Early days, a lot of opportunities aren’t available if I don’t show up. But I would love to be in the background,” he told The Times UK.
Despite the pressures, Pei’s vision for Nothing is ambitious. He foresees a potential public listing by 2028, but he emphasizes that a float would serve primarily as a fundraising tool rather than an exit strategy. “I just see floating as another round of fundraising. There’s no real exit in mind. I think we can build something really cool over time. Hopefully, this is a place where I can retire,” he explains to The Times UK. His ambitions extend far beyond the near term: “Nothing is between us and becoming a trillion-dollar company. Only our skill level and whether we can evolve fast enough and improve fast enough.”
Innovation remains at the core of Pei’s strategy. “Vibe coding,” his term for programming with artificial intelligence rather than traditional coding, exemplifies how Nothing blends creativity with technology. The digital Tamagotchi is one example; future devices, he hints to The Times UK, will continue to merge playful interactivity with practical functionality, reshaping what users expect from consumer electronics.
Pei balances this intense focus with personal passions. He is engaged, enjoys skiing, dining, gaming, and exploring culinary experiences, though he admits that vibe coding occasionally overshadows other hobbies. “Once you realise anything you can imagine can just happen, you get a much bigger dopamine hit than with games,” he says. Lunch concludes with a rich Lahori chicken and desserts, after which Pei heads off in an Uber to meet designers, ready to continue translating ambition into tangible, market-ready innovation.
From humble beginnings in Beijing to global recognition in London’s tech ecosystem, Carl Pei embodies a rare combination of creativity, resilience, and vision. Under his leadership, Nothing is more than a smartphone company; it is a platform for experimentation, design excellence, and cultural impact. Whether it will reach the lofty goal of a trillion-dollar valuation remains to be seen, but for now, the company exemplifies the audacity of ambition in a market dominated by giants — as chronicled in The Times UK.
