Cyanogen, which has unarguably become everyone’s favourite piece of software when it comes to delivering more than just the usual Android experience, has just scooped up another $80 Million in a fresh funding round, led by numerous investor groups.
Investors who participated in this round include India-based Premji Invest, Twitter Ventures, Qualcomm Incorporated, Telefónica Ventures, Smartfren Telecom, Index Ventures, and Access Industries. Cyanogen says that it will use use the cash to “hire talent and accelerate the development of its open OS platform.”
Kirt McMaster, CEO of Cyanogen Inc. said
We’re committed to creating an open computing platform that fundamentally empowers the entire mobile ecosystem from developers to hardware makers, and most importantly, consumers around the world. We’re excited to have the backing of an amazingly diverse group of strategic investors who are supporting us in building a truly open Android.
Cyaogen recently grabbed quite a lot of headlines when OnePlus announced the use of Cyanogen OS into its only smartphone, the One Plus One. However, that relationship itself has had a rough run, considering Cyanogen’s sudden turn on providing its OS exclusively to India-based Micromax when OnePlus launched itself into India.
Apart from that particular rough patch, Cyanogen has been one of the most sought after names in Android-related software.
Cyaogen’s free offering, the Cyanogen Mod, virtually opens up Android to levels of customisations, which many developers claim, even Google may not have been able to provide. With Cyanogen Mod, users can tweak up their Android OS completely to improve system performance, making the device far more faster as comapred to ones that run on usual Android builds.
However, $80 Million to an open-source project may come as surprise to many. It is a known fact that Cyanogen started as a community driven project, with developers pooling in their codes to make the Mod and eventually the OS, better.
To date, Cyanogen has received a total of $110 million in funding. Cyanogen is known for both its commercial distribution, Cyanogen OS, and open-source project CyanogenMod.
