Lightspeed’s Claire Zau interviews Bryce Strauss on the day Nominal announced a $240M Series C. Strauss, an aerospace engineer by training, spent four years building software not for software engineers but for the mechanical, electrical and chemical engineers behind aircraft, rockets and cars.
Nominal began in aerospace helping teams make sense of test data, then added real-time capability as those systems went into the field, and now works across energy, automotive and manufacturing. The company also shipped its first in-platform agent. Strauss explains why the pitch is not full automation but faster work with an auditable trail, a distinction buyers who have been deposed over engineering decisions care about deeply.