Carl Pei Yu (; born September 11, 1989) is a Swedish entrepreneur. He co-founded OnePlus along with Pete Lau, in 2013 and was the director of OnePlus Global. He left the firm in October 2020 to start a new hardware venture, called

Nothing Nothing, no-thing, or no thing is the complete absence of ''anything'', as the opposite of ''something'' and an antithesis of everything. The concept of nothing has been a matter of philosophical debate since at least the 5th century BCE. Ea ...

Early life

Pei was born in 1989 in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, China; his family soon moved to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, and then to

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

, where Pei grew up. He pursued a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in 2008 at the Stockholm School of Economics, but he dropped out in 2011 to work full-time in the Chinese

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

industry.

Career

Nokia

Pei interned at

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

in 2010, and he worked at the company for three months.

Meizu

After Nokia, the fan website Pei had created about

Meizu ‌Meizu (sometimes stylized in all caps) (Chinese name: 星纪魅族集团) ‌ is a technology company registered in Zhuhai, China. Its predecessor, Meizu Technology, was founded by Huang Zhang in 2003 and was famous for its MP3 player and s ...

had caught the attention of that company's

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

branch, and Pei started working in Meizu's marketing team in 2011.

Oppo

In November, he joined

Oppo Oppo (sometimes stylized as OPPO) is a private company, private China, Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong. Founded in 2004, its major product lines include Oppo phones, smartphones, Smart device, sm ...

as its international markets manager, where he worked directly under Pete Lau.

OnePlus

Pei co-founded OnePlus with Pete Lau in

Shenzhen Shenzhen is a prefecture-level city in the province of Guangdong, China. A Special economic zones of China, special economic zone, it is located on the east bank of the Pearl River (China), Pearl River estuary on the central coast of Guangdong ...

Guangdong ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...

in December 2013. Their first device, the

OnePlus One The OnePlus One (colloquially abbreviated to OPO and also known as OnePlus 1) is an Android smartphone manufactured by OnePlus. Unveiled in April 2014, it is the first product by OnePlus. The OnePlus One was designed to compare favorably – ...

, sold close to a million units in 2014, despite a sales target of only 50,000. In July 2015, Pei presented the

OnePlus 2 The OnePlus 2 (also abbreviated as OP2) is a smartphone designed by OnePlus. It is the successor to the OnePlus One. OnePlus revealed the phone on 28 July 2015 via virtual reality, using Google's Cardboard visor and its own app. OnePlus sold ...

through a virtual reality video on YouTube. It was claimed to be the first product launch in virtual reality, and it has been viewed over 1,522,495 times as of May 2025. After the unveiling of the OnePlus 3 in June 2016, Pei claimed it was the company's most popular smartphone, based on the

Net Promoter Score Net promoter score (NPS) is a market research metric that is based on a single survey question asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend a company, product, or a service to a friend or colleague. The NPS was developed by ...

. When asked in November 2016, Pei said the reason for the upgrade after only three months was because they did not want to wait to improve the hardware. Pei claimed the

OnePlus 5 The OnePlus 5 (also abbreviated as OP5) is a smartphone made by OnePlus. It is the successor to the OnePlus 3T, which was released in 2016. The OnePlus 5 was officially unveiled during a keynote on 20 June 2017 and first released on June 20, 20 ...

to be their fastest-selling device to date shortly after its release in June 2017. Pei oversaw the design and marketing of OnePlus devices until leaving the company in October 2020.

Nothing

Following his departure from OnePlus, Pei announced

on January 27, 2021. According to Pei, Nothing’s mission is to remove barriers between people and technology to create a seamless digital future. The company is based in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

and landed a number of notable investors, such as

iPod The iPod is a series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices that were designed and marketed by Apple Inc. from 2001 to 2022. The iPod Classic#1st generation, first version was released on November 10, 2001, about mon ...

inventor

Tony Fadell Anthony Michael Fadell (born March 22, 1969) is an American engineer, designer, entrepreneur, and investor. He was senior vice president of the iPod division at Apple Inc. and founder and former CEO of Nest Labs. Fadell joined Apple Inc. in 2 ...

, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin,

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

CEO

Steve Huffman Steve Huffman (born ), also known by his Reddit username spez (), is an American web developer and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Reddit, which ranks 9th in the top 20 websites in the world as of February 2025. He also co-fou ...

, and YouTuber

Casey Neistat Casey Owen Neistat (; born March 25, 1981) is an American YouTube personality, filmmaker, vlogger and co-founder of the multimedia company Beme, which was later acquired by CNN. In 2018, he founded ''368'', a creative space for creators to ...

. On February 25, the company announced Teenage Engineering as founding partners, mainly responsible for the design aesthetic of the brand and its products. Nothing's first product "ear (1)" was launched on July 27, 2021. On March 23, 2022, Nothing announced its first smartphone, the " Nothing Phone 1” with an anticipated release date of Summer 2022. It released on March 23, 2022 to overall positive reception. Critics praised the premium and innovative design and ‘glyph’ system, the display, and overall value for money. They were more critical of the quality of the cameras, and disappointing battery life, though reviewers have stated both have improved since with software updates. On February 28, 2023 Carl Pei announced that in their next Nothing smartphone, they would be partnering with Qualcomm for their eighth generation chipsets for their next smartphone. Nothing announced and released the Nothing Ear (2) wireless earbuds on March 22, 2023 to generally positive reviews, particularly for the improvements upon the flaws of the previous model. Pei's team led the market April 2024 by shipping a "first-of-its-kind integration" of ChatGPT for users of a paired Nothing phone and Nothing earbuds. Nothing has further went ahead to launch their own subbrand, CMF which prices it's phones at a more accessible pricepoint, in comparison. Nothing phone 2, 2a, 2a plus were released followed by the Nothing Phone 3a, 3a Pro in 2025.

Publicity

In July 2015, during an interview by ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'' about how OnePlus was created, Pei stated, "...we looked at all the Android phones on the market and there wasn't one phone that was good enough for us ourselves to use." In 2014 and 2015, he told ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' and ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

'' that "OnePlus wasn’t meant to become a global company at the beginning. The main focus was taking on the Chinese market. ... for the global markets team, we are a bunch of young people without a lot of experience. It was just like an experiment, 'Hey, do the global markets and see what happens. Do whatever you want.' We call our group 'a

within our company', or a start-up within a bigger company." And "Very soon our sales outside of China will surpass sales in China."

Awards

In April 2016, Pei was included in the 2016 edition of the ''

Marketing Week ''Marketing Week'' is a website focused on the marketing industry, based in London, that grew out of what was a weekly, and latterly monthly, print magazine. History and profile ''Marketing Week'' was launched in March 1978. Its co-founders were ...

'' Vision 100 list. In January 2016, he was included in the 2016 edition of the ''Forbes'' 30 Under 30 list for his influence in the technology industry. and in 2019, he was included in the 2019 edition of the Fortune ''Fortune'' 40 Under 40 list.

References

External links

Carl Pei
on

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pei, Carl Living people Businesspeople from Beijing Businesspeople in telecommunications Technology business executives Meizu people OnePlus people Nothing Technology people Chinese emigrants to Sweden 1989 births