The data nerds over at Nominal are on a bit of a heater.
Yesterday, the testing startup announced a sole-source $53M, five-year Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with the Air Force Test Center to bring its increasingly popular testing software to help get the service’s next-gen platforms up and running—and fast.
Those platforms include the F-47, B-21 bomber, Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), and hypersonics programs, and “a good portion of [the IDIQ] has already been obligated, and we’re in the process of putting additional funds on it through FY2026,” Nominal CEO Cameron McCord told Tectonic.
Behind the scenes: As a refresher, Nominal—founded in 2022 by McCord (ex-Anduril and Lux), Jason Hoch (ex-Palantir), and Bryce Strauss (ex-Lockheed)—doesn’t build the shiny things that go zoom and boom, but is becoming pretty critical to making sure they actually work.
- Nominal Core, their flagship software, is designed as a one-size-fits-all platform for aggregated testing.
- Rather than working across a bunch of different legacy tools, it enables engineering teams to collect, visualize, monitor, and analyze hardware telemetry, logs, video, and test data in real time.
- The company has inked testing deals with a whole bunch of defense tech hotshots like Anduril, Shield AI, Hermeus, Vatn Systems, Scout AI, Antares, and Forterra.
- Last month, Nominal hit unicorn status after raising a cool $80M “acceleration round” led by Founders Fund, valuing the company at $1B.
Testing, testing: The latest IDIQ with the AFTC isn’t Nominal’s first rodeo with the Air Force’s primary testing and evaluation organization.
The company’s been working with the AFTC pretty much since the start, which is pretty validating given the organization’s responsibilities.
- ATFC, put simply, is in charge of experimental flight testing of manned and unmanned aircraft, avionics, flight controls, weapons and mission systems, and whatever else goes into the stuff the Air Force flies and launches.
- It’s split up across three main hubs: Edwards Air Force Base in California (aircraft and aviation systems testing), Eglin AFB in Florida (weapons and mission systems testing), and Arnold AFB in Tennessee (ground and simulation testing of propulsion systems, including hypersonics).
“This all started in 2023 with a Phase I SBIR that we did with the Test Pilot School out at Edwards that scaled into a Phase II STTR, where we partnered with MIT to bring in more cutting-edge AI research into the product work, and that all culminated in this sole-source Phase III IDIQ,” Nominal CEO Cameron McCord told Tectonic. “You might not hear a ton of them, but I think this is a success story of the SBIR/STTR program.”
“We put a lot of effort into being present and making sure that the users of Nominal at Air Force Test Center love the product,” he added. Seems like that’s paying off.
According to McCord, under the IDIQ, Nominal will be “expanding the work we’re doing with programs like CCA, hypersonic testing, bombers in the B-21-type world, and then more with the F-47.”
On top of the work they’re doing with the AFTC on all those little projects no one’s ever heard of (joking!), they’re working with the Navy on the MQ-25 Stingray—the service’s first carrier-based unmanned aircraft—through a separate Phase III contract.
With a little startup spice and savvy, all that fancy tech could be flying sooner than expected.