Mobile games company Supercell received a $1.5 billion “strategic investment” from SoftBank and GungHo, which it said will “accelerate Supercell towards our goal of being the first truly mobile games company, and gives us enough time to get there”.

SoftBank is putting up 80 per cent of the cash, with GungHo contributing 20 per cent. They will acquire a 51 per cent stake via a company incorporated in Finland – Supercell’s home country: “Our operations remain in Finland, our management team remains in Finland and in San Francisco, and we continue to pay taxes in Finland.”

Supercell’s Clash of the Clans is a regular in the top grossing chart of Apple’s App Store, thanks in no small part to its success in Asia.

In a blog post, Ilkka Paananen, CEO of the company, said that one of its greatest aspirations is “to become the first truly global games company, one that has a strong foothold in both the West and the East, including Japan, Korea and China”.

He noted that the SoftBank deal “provides us with a massive selection of strategic resources that will help us deliver our games to hundreds of millions of new customers all over the globe”, and that its new investor is “all about the long term”.

The deal is also said to take an existing collaboration with GungHo “to the next level”. The executive said: “We’ve had a great collaboration between Puzzle & Dragons and Clash of Clans…they’re an amazing bunch of people, and they have a terrific culture”.

Noting the size of the investment, Paananen said that “everyone at the company will participate in the upside and receive a portion of the proceeds from the investment”.