Cyanogen raises $80 million Series C from investors including Twitter & Rupert Murdoch
Mobile operating system startup Cyanogen Inc. has raised $80 million Series C financing in a round led by Premji Invest included Twitter Ventures, Qualcomm Incorporated, Telefónica Ventures, Smartfren Telecom, Index Ventures, Access Industries, Rupert Murdoch, Vivi Nevo, and existing investors Benchmark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, and Tencent Holdings.
Founded in 2009, Cyanogen pitches itself as “reimaging the mobile operating system” and offers a customized version of Android that includes added original and third-party code.
Its core product CyanogenMod includes native theming support, FLAC audio codec support, an OpenVPN client, Privacy Guard, support for tethering over common interfaces, CPU overclocking and other performance enhancements, unlockable bootloader and root access, soft buttons. CyanogenMod is claimed to increase performance and reliability compared to official Android releases.
“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,” CEO of Cyanogen Kirt McMaster said in a statement. “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.”
Sandesh Patnam from lead investor Premji Invest added “We invested in Cyanogen because we’re big proponents of what they’re doing in opening up Android and supporting global and local ecosystem players….Cyanogen is well positioned to become the 3rd leading mobile OS, and we’re excited to back them in growing their business on a global scale.”
Including the new round Cyanogen has raised $110 million to-date over three rounds.
The company said it would use the new round to increase its employee count and accelerate the development of CyanogenMod.
Image credit: Cyanogen.
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