Nothing's CMF to Become Majority Indian-Owned, Pei Says

Carl Pei says Nothing's lower-priced subbrand CMF will be spun out as its own company, majority-owned by Indian shareholders and headquartered in India, while Nothing will remain a shareholder and partner.

Ownership change and corporate background

Pei posted the plan on X, adding a new detail to the spin-off Nothing announced in September 2025, when the company said CMF would become an independent subsidiary based in India. Nothing also said at that time it would invest more than $100 million in a joint venture with Optiemus to localize CMF production, creating around 1,800 jobs over three years. CMF was registered as a separate entity, CMF India Private Limited, in December 2025. The new disclosure is that Indian shareholders will hold the majority; Pei did not name those shareholders, give a date for the ownership change, or specify the exact ownership split.

What CMF will take and engineering responsibilities

Pei says CMF will carry Nothing OS, the engineering team, supplier relationships, and the brand operation into the new company. Nothing OS is the Android-based software Nothing develops in-house, and Pei states that it has received scheduled updates on every Nothing device since 2021.

He sets out a clear expectation that CMF should handle more engineering itself rather than leaving technical work to manufacturing partners. Pei lists the engineering tasks CMF should own:

• Designing the phone structure, including materials, heat management and durability
• Choosing camera sensors and building the camera software
• Writing the operating system and committing to updates
• Tuning and certifying antennas
• Working with suppliers on displays, chipsets and camera modules

Pei argues that brands that delegate most of these responsibilities to manufacturing partners are effectively selecting phones from a catalog and competing mainly on price.

He frames the move as part of a longer-term strategy: in 2015 Indian brands sold close to half of phones in India, Pei says, but the domestic share fell to under 1 percent by 2025 as foreign brands entered the market. With 99 percent of phones sold in India now manufactured there, Pei says deeper engineering is the next step after local production. His stated volume target is 100 million phones a year, which he says is the scale at which suppliers will build parts to a brand's specifications rather than offering off-the-shelf components.

Unresolved issues for customers and product plans

Pei's post leaves several practical questions unanswered. It does not identify the Indian shareholders, explain the ownership split, or give a timeline for the transfer. It also does not clarify who will handle Nothing OS updates and support for CMF devices after the move, which will affect current owners of CMF phones.

The CMF lineup remains small. In June, Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis said CMF would skip a new phone in 2026 because rising memory costs made a successor to the CMF Phone 2 Pro difficult to build at CMF price points. Evangelidis said other CMF products, including items in new categories, are still planned for this year. Until those products arrive, the CMF Phone 2 Pro remains CMF's newest phone.

CMF launched in September 2023 as Nothing's lower-priced brand, and India quickly became its largest market. CMF's phones sell for under $200, and IDC data cited by Nothing shows phones priced between $100 and $200 accounted for more than 42 percent of India's shipments in the second quarter of 2025, giving CMF a substantial addressable market at home.