CyanogenMod is fast emerging as a major Open Source force in the mobile space which will ensure that Open Source remains a dominant players in this market.
The newly formed company has opened the new chapter of its history by bagging $23 million financing from A16Z (Andreessen Horowitz). CyanogenMod was recently incorporated as a company after getting Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures as partners and raising $7 million in funding.
Steve Kondik, founder of CyanogenMOd, said, “Peter Levine from A16Z will also be joining our board of directors. This new influx of capital will primarily be used to grow our engineering team as well as our UX, design, and product teams so that we can continue to build the next generation of mobile experience.”
Levin is a partner at A16Z and prior to that he was the CEO of XenSource, a provider of open source virtualization solutions, which was acquired by Citrix Systems in 200.
Levin said that one of the reasons “why Android is winning is due to that open source spirit of additive innovation. Because consumers are clamoring for increased personalization and customization options, the Android open source community has been happily taking up the task of fulfilling that demand.”
He then praised CyanogenMod for it’s Open Source roots, “CM takes the best of what Android offers and adds innovative features to create a clean yet customizable user experience. CM is 100% compatible with all Android applications, yet brings fabulous new capabilities to Android such as enhanced security, performance, device support, and personalization. Cyanogen has been powered by the open-source community—led by its founder Steve Kondik—ever since it launched four years ago. The community continues to work at a feverish pace, helping to bring up both newly launched and existing Android devices with the latest Cyanogen builds.”
CM has over 11 million active users and the company is showing no sign of slowing down. The company succeeded in a deal with Oppo to bring CM pre-installed devices to the market.
