The Finnish mobile gaming company Supercell has sold a 51 percent stake for a gobsmacking $1.5 BILLION, mere months after it raised $130 million in venture capital funding. The latest money comes from Japan, specifically the telecoms firm SoftBank (the owner of U.S. carrier Sprint) and the locally huge gaming outfit GungHo.
Supercell is the company behind the hit games Clash of Clans and Hay Day, which rake in an astonishing amount via the magic of in-game purchases – back in April, shortly after the last funding came through (from Index Ventures, Atomico Partners and Institutional Venture Partners, at a valuation of $770 million), the estimate was $2.4 million per day.
In a blog post on Tuesday, CEO Ilkka Paananen said the fresh funding would help Supercell become the “first truly global games company,” by which he largely means big in both the West and the East.
Over to Paananen:
“We want to build a company that people all over the globe will look back in 30 years and talk about all the great games that we developed and the impact they had on people’s lives. The same way I personally feel about Nintendo, for example.”
That’s no small goal. 80 percent of the cash comes from SoftBank, the founder of which, Masayoshi Son, said in the blog post that both companies were “on a similar long and aspirational journey to shape the future of entertainment for the next hundred years.”
Supercell and GungHo have collaborated before, doing a spot of cross-promotion between Clash of Clans and GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons game.
Luckily for Finland, which is still licking its wounds over the sale of local hero Nokia’s handset business to Microsoft, Supercell will stay sited there and will continue to pay tax there.
What’s more, Supercell’s employees should be in for a treat. As Paananen wrote:
“As many of you know, a big part of Supercell’s culture is the idea of ‘we are all in this together’. In line with this thinking, everyone at the company will participate in the upside and receive a portion of the proceeds from the investment. None of us work here just for of money, but when the company succeeds, everyone should get their fair share of it and this transaction is no exception.”
