Cyanogen, which was making a custom operating system for smartphones based on Android a couple of years ago, has now been rebranded as Cyngn. With changing its name, the company has also changed its business.

Cyngn, which had previously raised $115 million, has now pivoted from being a custom Android mobile operating system developer to self-driving cars. It is now working on the autonomous driving technology.

As per the reports, the company is developing self-driving car software and possibly hardware too. This was revealed through its website and job listings. The company has also recently got approval from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to test self-driving cars on public roadways.

The reason behind the course change for the company is believed that executives and board members at Cyngn see automated vehicles sector as disruptive in the next five years.

The company currently has around 30 staff members, including autonomous automotive engineers from Mercedes Benz and Udacity. It appears that the company is still looking to hire more people.

Job listings posted by the company reveals that Cyngn is working with radar, camera, ultrasonic, and lidar sensors, and is using ROS — an open-source operating system for robots.

Read More: Faraday Future Finally Unveils the FF91, its Sleek Self-Driving Electric SUV

Earlier, the company, which was formerly known as Cyanogen, had raised about $115 million in various funding rounds from Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Foxconn, Tencent and others.

It is now looking to raise additional funding of around $200 million in its Series D round. Some reports suggest that it is also open to being purchased outright.

Cyanogen was one of the largest company developing an operating system for smartphones. At its peak, the company’s software was running on over 50 million devices and was on track to hit half a billion handsets by 2020.

But, due to bad business practices, deals, and disagreements about the future of Cyanogen Mod operating system, the company started going downwards. It fired most of its staff and closed its Seattle office at the end of last year.

It will be interesting to track Cyngn’s journey as it explores a totally different territory. It faces competition from automakers as well as giant tech firms, including Apple, Waymo, Drive.ai, among others.

(Via)

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Last year, the Lenovo backed ZUK entered the market with its brand new ZUK Z1 smartphone. The phone ran the old Snapdragon 801 flagship but it turned out to be quite a successful device, launching in a number of countries internationally, including recently in India. But for a young company, it was necessary to have a great OS, and hence, it partnered up with Cyanogen for using Cyanogen OS on its new device. Given the popularity of Cyanogen, it turned out to be a good decision, since it promised timely updates and new features on the ZUK Z1.

Now, the company has updated the Z series with two new smartphones, the ZUK Z2 and the ZUK Z2 Pro. Both these devices are running the company’s own ZUI 1.9 version out of the box, but that’s for the Chinese version. We haven’t yet heard anything about the international variants of these devices, nor any comments about the OS that will power them. It’s possible that ZUK continues to use Cyanogen OS for their international variants, but the company just launched a ZUI Android website and the site is available in English as well as Chinese. What’s even more interesting is that that the official ZUK forums have threads talking about overseas ROM support. Of course, this doesn’t in any way confirm that ZUK has ditched Cyanogen, but it shows that ZUK is invested in its own OS.

We have seen OnePlus switch to their own OxygenOS (HydrogenOS in China) for its new devices last year and it’s possible that ZUK follows the same route this year. At this moment, nothing is official, and we will have to wait for an official statement from the company to throw some more light on the company’s plans for its international models.

Meanwhile, let’s know if you think it would be a good idea for ZUK to switch to its own OS for international variants as well, instead of Cyanogen.

(via)

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When OnePlus One first hit the markets, the device came with the much loved Cyanogen OS. However, in the later months, the strong partnership between the two companies started to weaken. Cyanogen tied up with the Indian manufacturer Yureka exclusively, which meant OnePlus Ones shipped in India was not be officially supported by Cyanogen. This put OnePlus in a tricky position which eventually led to the birth of the Oxygen OS.

Now, it looks like Cyanogen has decided to terminate its partnership with OnePlus. Speaking at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, OnePlus CEO Kirt McMaster and founder Steve Kondik said a few things about the company’s plans for the future and it didn’t involve OnePlus.

Steve said that both the companies had different visions for their software which eventually led to clashes when each one tried to go on with their own visions.

That’s probably the last you will see from that partnership.” … “Two new companies are trying to do crazy stuff, a lot of people collide.”

But CEO Kirt is of the opinion that OnePlus’s success have been mostly led by its Cyanogen OS. He said that the company built its brand with the backing on his company.

Without Cyanogen, OnePlus would have sold like one device in international markets,” … “Essentially they built their brand on the back of Cyanogen.” – Kirt McMaster

Cyanogen has other big plans as the company aims to partner up with a brand that can expand much quicker than OnePlus into international territories. The company has not revealed any specific names, but it is said that the likely partner could be another Chinese company.

Meanwhile, OnePlus Ones will still be supported by Cyanogen but OnePlus will soon release its new OxygenOS to its users.

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