A day after a report claimed Nothing was preparing to exit more than a dozen global markets, the company's co-founder has pushed back publicly, calling the report inaccurate while confirming that changes are underway inside the company, just not the ones initially described.
What Akis Evangelidis Said
Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis posted a response on X directly disputing the earlier report. "FAKE NEWS... We are not shutting down any markets. Inaccurate reports are being circulated; Phone (4b) sold 29,537 units on Day 1 only, breaking records in its price segment," he wrote.
That sales figure directly contradicts the approximately 20,000 global units the earlier report had attributed to the Phone (4b) since launch, with Evangelidis instead describing nearly 30,000 units sold on the first day alone as a record for the device's price segment.
What He Confirmed Instead
Rather than a market exit, Evangelidis described an internal reorganization. "What we are doing is reorganising our teams to prepare for our next phase of growth. We are introducing dedicated business units — including an AI-native business unit — and consolidating individual countries into regional hubs to operate much more efficiently," he wrote.
He acknowledged that this restructuring has affected certain positions, though he did not confirm specific headcount numbers. "These changes have impacted certain positions, and while we are unable to share specific details due to regulatory compliance and ongoing local consultation processes, the reported numbers are way overblown," he said, calling on media outlets to "uphold factual reporting and journalistic integrity."
Evangelidis closed the statement by acknowledging the difficulty of the changes for affected staff: "Decisions that impact people's livelihoods are never taken lightly, and we know how difficult this transition is for our team members who are affected. We are deeply grateful for their contributions and are fully committed to supporting them through this process. While these are hard decisions, it is a necessary step to position us to shape the next era of personal computing."
What This Confirms and What It Doesn't
Evangelidis's statement directly denies two specific claims from the earlier report: that Nothing is shutting down operations in specific markets, and the Phone (4b)'s reported sales figures. What it does not directly address is the earlier report's claim of a 30 to 40 percent global headcount reduction — Evangelidis calls the reported numbers "way overblown" without offering an alternative figure, and cites regulatory compliance and ongoing local consultation processes as the reason specific details can't be shared yet.
In effect, the restructuring itself is being confirmed while its scale remains disputed, along with a firm denial that any markets are being exited outright.
Techoper's Take
Reading Evangelidis's statement carefully, it's a partial denial rather than a full one. The market-exit claim gets an unambiguous "fake news," and the Phone (4b) sales dispute is backed by a specific, checkable number. But the layoffs themselves aren't denied, only the scale reported earlier, and the actual number remains unconfirmed pending "regulatory compliance and ongoing local consultation processes" — language that, on its own, tends to mean the final headcount impact hasn't been finalized or isn't ready for public disclosure yet.
Restructuring into regional hubs and launching an AI-native business unit is a fairly standard growth-stage move for a company that's expanded quickly, and it's a very different story from a company retreating from markets. Whether the specifics eventually match Evangelidis's framing or lean closer to the original report will likely become clearer once Nothing shares concrete numbers, something that hasn't happened yet.
