Nothing CEO Carl Pei isn’t just tweaking smartphone design; he’s calling for the end of apps entirely. In an interview at SXSW, as reported by TechCrunch AI, Pei laid out a vision where AI agents replace the app-based interface we’ve used for nearly two decades.
“Apps are going to disappear,” Pei said bluntly, warning founders that any startup whose core value lives inside an app “will be disrupted whether you like it or not.”
That’s a bold claim from someone who literally sells smartphones. But Pei is positioning Nothing, the consumer electronics brand he co-founded, as the company that builds what comes after the iPhone era.
🔮 The Three-Step Roadmap
Pei broke his vision into stages:
- AI executes single commands: booking flights and reserving hotels. Pei called this “super boring.”
- AI learns your long-term intentions. Want to get healthier? The device nudges you toward that goal without being asked.
- The device acts on your behalf without any prompt at all. It knows you well enough to anticipate what you need before you do.
“The system knows us so well, it will come up with things that we don’t even know we wanted,” Pei explained, drawing a parallel to ChatGPT’s memory feature.
📱 Why the Current Phone UX Is Stuck in 2007
Pei made a sharp observation: despite massive leaps in underlying technology, the smartphone interface hasn’t fundamentally changed since the original iPhone. Lock screens, home screens, app grids, app stores: it’s the same paradigm.
His frustration is practical. Grabbing coffee with a friend still means bouncing between four apps: messaging, maps, Uber, calendar. “It’s very hard to get things done on a phone,” he said.
The fix, in Pei’s view, is an OS that collapses all those steps into a single AI-driven action based on your intent.
🤖 Interfaces Built for Agents, Not Humans
What stands out here is Pei’s stance on how AI agents should interact with services. He explicitly rejected the approach where AI mimics human touch, tapping through menus and navigating apps the way a person would.
“That’s not the future. The future is not the agent using a human interface. You need to create an interface for the agent to use,” he said.
This is a meaningful distinction. Companies like Anthropic and Google are investing heavily in computer-use agents that navigate existing UIs. Pei is arguing that’s a transitional hack, not an end state. The real shift happens when services expose agent-native interfaces, essentially APIs designed for AI, not screens designed for thumbs.
💡 Why This Matters Now
Pei isn’t speaking from a vacuum. Nothing closed a $200 million Series C last year, partly on this AI-first device pitch. The company’s own OS already lets users vibe code mini apps, hinting at the transition.
But the broader signal is competitive. Apple, Google, and Samsung are all layering AI features onto existing app ecosystems. Pei is betting that layering isn’t enough; the entire paradigm needs replacing. If he’s right, the winners won’t be companies that add AI to apps. They’ll be companies that eliminate apps altogether.
Pei did temper expectations: apps aren’t vanishing tomorrow. The infrastructure for agent-native interfaces doesn’t exist yet at scale. But for AI practitioners and product builders, the practical takeaway is clear: start designing for agent consumption alongside human consumption. Services that are only accessible through visual interfaces risk becoming invisible in an agent-driven world.
Whether Nothing can actually deliver this vision against Apple and Google is another question entirely. But the direction Pei is pointing? Increasingly, the rest of the industry seems to agree, even if they’re not ready to say it out loud yet.
Full details are available in the original report from TechCrunch AI.