Nothing to make CMF an India company, targets 100 million phones with $100 million investment

Nothing will spin off CMF into a majority Indian-owned company with local R&D and its own team. Carl Pei said the move is meant to help build a global consumer electronics brand from India.

In Short

• CMF will get its own India team and local R&D operations
• Nothing will remain an investor and partner after the restructuring
• Pei said India has manufacturing strength but needs deeper product engineering

Nothing is spinning off its CMF sub-brand into a standalone Indian company. CEO Carl Pei on Monday announced the move, saying the company aims to help build a global consumer electronics brand from India. Pei said CMF will now become an India-based company, with a majority of its shares owned by Indian shareholders and its headquarters in India. The company will also have its own team and research and development operations in the country, while Nothing will remain a shareholder and partner.

In an open letter posted on X, Pei said India is already well placed to build its own global consumer electronics brands, having developed a large manufacturing base, a huge smartphone market and a deep pool of software talent. However, he said the next step is building stronger in-house engineering and R&D capabilities. “Nothing has built exactly that, and shipped it to millions of people worldwide. Now the opportunity is to take it to India and scale it 100x,” he wrote.

With CMF now becoming an India-based company, the brand will have its own team and R&D operations in the country, while continuing to benefit from Nothing's engineering expertise, operating system, supplier relationships and global brand infrastructure. Nothing will retain a stake in the company and continue to work with CMF as a partner.

“We're spinning CMF out of Nothing into a standalone Indian company: majority Indian owned, headquartered in India, with its own team and R&D in the country. Nothing stays as a shareholder and partner. CMF becomes Indian,”Pei announced.

CMF has big plans for India

The announcement of the spin off builds on Nothing's earlier plans to make India the centre of CMF's global operations. In September 2025, Nothing announced a strategic joint venture with Indian electronics manufacturer Optiemus Infracom to manufacture Nothing and CMF products in the country. As part of the partnership, Nothing and Optiemus said they would invest more than $100 million over three years and create more than 1,800 jobs in India. Nothing also said at the time that CMF would operate as an independent subsidiary, with India becoming its base for operations, R&D and manufacturing.

Interestingly, the latest announcement comes at a time when CMF is not launching a new smartphone in 2026. Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis confirmed earlier this year that the company had been working on a successor to the CMF Phone 2 Pro but decided not to launch it because rising memory prices made it difficult to deliver a meaningful upgrade at a price that made sense for CMF. He said the company would rather postpone the launch than release a product it was not proud of.

However, Evangelidis said CMF would continue launching new products in 2026, including products in entirely new categories. He also said the brand would focus on IoT products this year, while its smartphone plans would be reassessed once market conditions improve. CMF launched CMF Buds Neo last month, as it looks to build a broader ecosystem beyond smartphones.

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