Grand Cru, a Finland-based mobile, touch-screen game development studio, has closed €8.5m ($11m) in series A funding, led by existing seed-stage investor, private equity firm Idinvest Partners, joined by new investors Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venturing division of US-based semiconductor and telecoms equipment company Qualcomm, and Nokia Growth Partners, the corporate venturing unit of Finland based mobile phone maker Nokia.
Grand Cru has now raised total funding of €12.5m ($16m). Previously, the startup raised $2m seed funding in March 2012, largely from Idinvest Partners together with angel investors.
Walter Masalin of Nokia Growth Partners said: “We are impressed with Grand Cru’s team of mobile gaming veterans. They have created a great title and combined it with unique in-house developed technology. Growth in mobile gaming is accelerating and we are excited to be part of it.”
Guillaume Lautour, Partner at Idinvest, said: “Like many of the other gaming studios we fund, we have been supporting Grand Cru since seed stage. The exceptional quality of the team led us to confirm our long-term commitment to help Markus Pasula build a world-class studio.”
Markus Pasula, co-founder and chief executive officer, Grand Cru, said: “At Grand Cru, our name derives from our ultimate goal of delivering outstanding products that raise the bar on quality, and our commitment has been recognized and bolstered by these investments from partners such as Idinvest, Qualcomm Ventures and Nokia Growth Partners.”
The Helsinki-located studio’s inaugural, soon-to-be-released iOS game is Supernauts, billed as a 3D creative social game inspired by Minecraft. Supernauts “allows players to build and share their own unique worlds while also travelling to the flooded Earth to rescue humans.”