In a round of Series C financing, Cyanogen has raised $80 million in funding for their alternative Android OS, CyanogenMod. The company intends to use the influx of cash "to hire talent and accelerate the development of its open OS platform.

The funding round brought in the investment arms of several large companies across the telecom and web industries, including Twitter Ventures, Qualcomm, and Telefónica Ventures. Existing investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Tencent Holdings also pitched in more money. Notably absent was Microsoft, who after sustained rumors declined to participate in the funding round (they've got their own mobile OS competing with Google's Android to take care of, after all). It's interesting to note that with Microsoft's rumored participation the funding round was expected to raise $110 million, but without Microsoft (and possibly other unnamed firms that opted not to become investors in Cyanogen), $80 million was raised instead. That's no small number, of course, and it'll still do Cyanogen well to have that kind of cash on hand.

CyanogenMod is available freely for nearly 300 devices, and is pre-installed on the OnePlus One and Alcatel OneTouch Hero 2+.

Press release: