Chinese investment giant Tencent Holdings Limited has confirmed that it has acquired a majority of the stakes of Supercell, a mobile game development company based in Finland which is famous for developing the mobile game Clash of Clans.

Tencent confirmed that it paid $8.6 billion to acquire 84.3 percent of Supercell's shares. This includes the 73 percent stake owned by Softbank and 11.3 percent stake owned by Supercell employee shareholders and former employee shareholders.

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Tencent said that Supercell's current executive team will maintain its independent operations. The Chinese company also stated that it has no plans to move Supercell's headquarters from Finland.

Following the acquisition, several economic experts dubbed Supercell as the first ever decacorn company to come out of Europe. A decacorn is a tech company worth more than $10 billion. Tencent's $8.6 billion buyout of Supercell pushed the latter's valuation to $10.2 billion, making it the first European technology startup to reach that milestone.

Supercell's games like Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Hay Day, and Boom Beach are regularly on the top of download charts for both the iOS and Android platforms. On the other hand, Tencent is a relatively new player in the Western tech market despite the fact that the company is worth $207 billion.

Tencent's biggest break in the Western tech market is WeChat, a mobile messaging app which is China's equivalent of Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, App Store, and PayPal, all rolled into a single app.

Currently, WeChat has more than 762 million monthly users. Statistics reveal that more than half of Tencent's revenue comes from online games. Many tech analysts have suggested that Tencent's acquisition of Supercell will help the latter break into the burgeoning Chinese mobile gaming market.

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