Cyanogen Inc. is close to raise $110 million in new round of funding, according to a report from Bloomberg. Earlier this year WSJ said that Microsoft is looking invest $70 million in Cyanogen Inc. Microsoft Corp. decided not to invest after negotiations, says the new report.
According to Bloomberg’s sources, PremjiInvest, the investment vehicle of Wipro Ltd. Chairman Azim Premji, will be among the investors in the new funding. The new round could value Cyanogen at $500 million or more, says the report.
Microsoft might be interested in a commercial deal to get its applications and services onto Cyanogen OS and it had talks to explore an investment with the goal of putting Microsoft’s applications on Cyanogen software, according to its sources. Microsoft did not comment on this matter. Microsoft is keen on expanding its services to other operating systems. According to a recent report, Microsoft plans to bring its personal assistant Cortana to Android and iOS platforms.
Cyanogen Inc. partnered with OnePlus last year for the OnePlus One, which is the first official Cyanogen OS smartphone. Micromax’s YU partnered with Cyanogen few months back to use the OS in their YU series of smartphones starting with YU YUREKA in India. The company recently partnered with Alcatel One Touch by TCL Communication to introduce Alcatel One Touch Hero 2+ running on Cyanogen OS. Alcatel OneTouch had said at that time that it will introduced more devices with Cyanogen OS in 2015 and beyond.