MUMBAI: Cyanogen Inc., a mobile operating system (OS) pure-play, has completed an $80 million round of Series C financing. With offices in Palo Alto and Seattle, the company will leverage the infusion of new funding to hire talent and accelerate the development of its open OS platform.

The financing was led by Premji Invest and includes participation from new strategic investors namely News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch, Twitter Ventures, Qualcomm Incorporated, Telefónica Ventures, Smartfren Telecom, Index Ventures, Access Industries (the US-based industrial group headed by Len Blavatnik), Vivi Nevo, and several yet to be announced partners.

Existing investors Benchmark, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, and Tencent Holdings Ltd. also participated.

“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. 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,” said Cyanogen Inc CEO Kirt McMaster.

“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,” added Premji Invest technology sector lead Sandesh Patnam.

To date, Cyanogen has received a total of $110 million in funding. Cyanogen is known for both its commercial distribution, Cyanogen OS, and open-source project CyanogenMod.