Finnish game developer Grand Cru has announced the closing of EUR8.5 million ($11 MM) in Series A funding, bringing the total amount raised to EUR12.5 MM (more than $16 MM). New investors Qualcomm Ventures and Nokia Growth Partners join the lead investor Idinvest Partners in supporting the development studio that's poised to be the next mobile hit-maker from Helsinki.

Grand Cru has received numerous awards and accolades over the last 15 months during the development of its initial mobile game Supernauts, including winning the 2013 AWS Start-up Challenge, qualifying as a finalist in the 2013 London Web Summit and being named one of the hottest start-ups in Europe by Wired Magazine.

'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,' said Guillaume Lautour, Partner at Idinvest.

'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,' said Walter Masalin of Nokia Growth Partners. 'Growth in mobile gaming is accelerating and we are excited to be part of it.'

'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,' said Markus Pasula, co-founder and CEO, Grand Cru. 'Our soon-to-be-released first title, Supernauts, is a mass-market world-building game for iOS that is truly social, allowing players to solve puzzles and create shareable worlds, brick-by-brick.'

Inspired by Minecraft and other casual sandbox games, Supernauts is a 3D creative social game that allows players to build and share their own unique worlds while also traveling to the flooded Earth to rescue humans. Whether inviting others to visit their turf to see what they've built or working together to maximize resources, Supernauts provides players with multiple reasons and opportunities to share their experiences and creations.

For more information on Grand Cru and Supernauts, please visit www.GrandCruGames.com.

About Grand Cru

Based in Helsinki, the hit-making capital of the mobile universe, Grand Cru is dedicated to creating touch-screen games that will allow everybody, gamer or not, to create beautiful and unique shared experiences. Founded in 2011 by six Finnish game-development veterans who believe that people ultimately want to play games together, Grand Cru is in a unique position to use their development team's experience on titles such as Habbo Hotel and Tiki Towers to create deep social games with broad appeal such as Supernauts, delivering games that players will want to share a number of ways, for a number of reasons.

About Idinvest Partners

Idinvest Partners (based in Paris, France) is a European private equity investor, managing $4 billion out of which $1.3 billion in venture capital. The firm was part of Allianz until 2010 and became independent with the backing of IDI Group. Having led the funding of more than 100 startups in Europe since 1999 (like Criteo, Deezer, Meetic, Dailymotion, Talend), Idinvest Partners is also a seasoned investor in the online gaming space, leading from seed to late-stage with successful studios and operators like Pretty Simple Games, Social Point, Plumbee, eRepublik Labs, Kobojo, Winamax, Zeturf, Curse and Grand Cru.

About Qualcomm Ventures

Qualcomm Ventures, the venture investment group of Qualcomm Incorporated, was launched in the United States in November 2000 with an initial US$500 million allocation. Qualcomm Ventures' aim is to support Qualcomm's mission of enabling and fostering 3G and wireless Internet markets in US, Europe, Asia and Latin America through investments in privately owned startup ventures. These investments include companies focusing on wireless communication technologies and products serving consumer, enterprise and vertical markets worldwide. www.qualcomm.com/ventures.

About Nokia Growth Partners

Nokia Growth Partners invests in companies that are changing the face of mobility, communications and the internet. NGP offers industry expertise, capital and an extensive network, enabling entrepreneurs to build disruptive, industry-changing companies and take them to the global market. With offices in the US, Europe, India and China, NGP extends the reach of companies making their products and services local everywhere. Visit www.nokiagrowthpartners.com for more information.