Rarely a week goes by that we don’t have a story of some description on Cyanogen Inc here on Ausdroid. This week is no exception. Reports have recently surfaced rebutting the previous rumour that Microsoft was going to invest in the fledgling Android software company. In October a rumour surfaced that Cyanogen Inc was attempting to raise funding seeking a valuation of around US$1 billion. It seemed ambitious at the time, assuming it was correct in the first place but with Microsoft being one of the rumoured investors it was not dismissed out of hand.
Now it has been revealed by sources close to the company that Cyanogen Inc is close to inking an agreement on a $110 million round of financing. One of the investors, PremjiInvest, has said that those investing have asked for it to not be identified but another source has confirmed that Microsoft is not included in the list of investors this time. I say this time because in January the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft and Cyanogen Inc were deep in talks regarding a partnership. With Microsoft now having their apps in the stock ROM on the latest Samsung flagship it seems that Microsoft is making a strong push into the Android world. Cyanogen have said they want to “take away Android from Google” so they must remain a target for Microsoft in their plan for a stronger foothold in the mobile world.
After this round of investment Cyanogen Inc could be valued at over $500 million, not the $1billion they were hoping for but definitely a great success for a company coming up to only two years old. There is no doubt that Microsoft will be watching them closely as their own mobile operating system struggles to gain a foothold in the mobile world. In the meantime other, smaller investors will continue to sink money into the software company which seems to be going forwards in leaps and bounds.
Do you see this as an accurate valuation of a custom ROM company relying so much on unpaid developers to submit code to them? Or is this a strength of Cyanogen Inc, their contacts and relationships with the developer community?
will these goons hurry up and disappear!