About a week ago, Andy Rubin the father of  Android, showed off the first two products from his startup – a new smartphone as well as an internet-connected home speaker similar to Amazon Echo and Google Home. Now Andy Rubin is moving on to greater things as he has raised $300 million for his new smartphone startup, Essential, at a valuation of nearly $1 billion. Sharp guy!
Bloomberg reported that Andy Rubin filed paperwork on the investment late last month just before he unveiled plans for the two new products. Rubin was on the edge of raising $100 million from Japanese tech giant, SoftBank but that did not work due to a conflict of interest with Apple which recently partnered with SoftBank on its $100 billion Vision Fund.
Prior to this latest financing, Rubin raised $30 million for Essential from Playground Global and Redpoint Ventures, according to Equidate, which runs a market for private company stock. Based on the investor section on Essential’s website, Essential’s other investors include Asian tech giants like Foxconn and Tencent.
Rubin founded the Playground Global hardware accelerator after leaving Google in 2014. He ran Google’s  Android unit for more than 10 years.