US-based mobile operating platform developer Cyanogen closed an $80m series C round yesterday backed by a host of corporates.
Investment firm Premji Invest led the round, which included internet company Tencent, wireless technology maker Qualcomm, Twitter Ventures and Telefónica Ventures, the respective corporate venturing units of microblogging platform Twitter and telecommunications firm Telefónica, telecoms company Smartfren Telecom and conglomerate Access Industries.
The round also featured venture capital firms Index Ventures, Benchmark, Andreessen Horowitz and Redpoint Ventures, and private investors Rupert Murdoch and Vivi Nevo. Cyanogen is the first company to receive funding from Twitter Ventures.
Founded in 2013, Cyanogen is developing and commercialising an open source version of the Android mobile operating system (OS) called CyanogenMod that would allow the development of apps for the platform free of internet company Google, which owns Android. It has accumulated more than 50 million users around the world.
The funding follows a $23m series B round in 2013 that featured Tencent, Andreessen Horowitz and Benchmark, and increases Cyanogen’s total funding to $110m.
The company will use the capital to expand its workforce as it looks to further develop the system, seeking to include it pre-loaded on the hardware of selected phone manufacturers. Several of the round’s backers expressed interest in pursuing strategic partnerships alongside the funding.
Richard Tan, Smartfren’s deputy CEO, said: “We are thrilled to partner with Cyanogen to bring their high performance and secure mobile platform to our customers in Indonesia. With Cyanogen installed as the preferred OS for our Andromax devices, users can look forward to a vastly superior mobile computing experience that will help drive greater innovation.”
Jack Leeney, US head of investing for Spain-based Telefónica Ventures, added: “As a digital telco, Telefónica believes an open ecosystem can bring the best access to technology to our customers around the world.
“We see the opportunity to partner with Cyanogen as the open OS to best benefit consumers and service providers as the mobile computing revolution spreads globally.”