In Brief Posted: 10:59 AM PST · March 5, 2026 Image Credits: Cameron McCord Nominal on Thursday announced a fresh $80 million Series B extension round at a $1 billion valuation, led by Founders Fund. This followed the company’s $75 million Series B round led by Sequoia in September. The company offers software that helps hardware engineers test their designs and began as a picks-and-shovels type of startup for the defense industry. The three-and-a-half-year-old, L.A.-based company says that in the last 10 months, it has landed four of the five largest defense contractors as customers. CEO and co-founder Cameron McCord (pictured) is a former U.S. Navy submarine officer and an alum of defense tech company Anduril, which is also one of Nominal’s marquee customers. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Anduril co-founder and executive chairman Trae Stephens, who is also a Founders Fund partner, led this as a preemptive deal, McCord told Bloomberg and confirmed to TechCrunch.…