Cyanogen Inc. officially formed in September 2013 as a company that is working to build new features on top of vanilla Android and make it easy for consumers to install their customized OS. Apparently Cyanogen’s effort recently drew the eye of Google itself, but the Cyanogen team spurned that interest.
A new report from The Information says that Sundar Pichai, head of Android and Chrome at Google recently met with Cyanogen Inc.’s leadership to speak about acquiring the company. However, Cyanogen turned Pichai and Google away.
Now it’s said that Cyanogen Inc. is looking to get some Series C funding from some large tech companies and investors. The claim is that Cyanogen wants around $1 billion. That’s a lot, but Cyanogen thinks that it’s worth that amount because it’s got a deal to get its customized version of Android on Micromax hardware. Micromax holds a large slice of the market in India.
It’s interesting to hear that Google was interested in acquiring Cyanogen. What’s unclear is exactly what Google would have done with the company. Perhaps it was just seeing an acqui-hire and wanting to get the Cyanogen Inc. team’s talent in its own house. We’ll likely never know for sure.
Looking ahead, Cyanogen Inc. has already partnered with Oppo and OnePlus, and a deal with Micromax could bring some even bigger growth for the firm.
