Ilkka Paananen
Co-Founder @ Illusian Founder Office
Helsinki, Finland
Ilkka Paananen is a seed investor at Illusian Founder Office in Helsinki focused on Software and Artificial Intelligence. Ilkka Paananen, is the CEO and co-founder of Supercell, the Helsinki-based mobile games developer behind Clash of Clans, Hay Day, Boom Beach, Clash Royale and Brawl Stars. Since its founding in 2010, Supercell's five games have amassed 100m daily players and remain in the global top 10 years after launch. In June 2016, Supercell became thefirst European technology start-up to reach a valuation of $10 billion.In addition to his role at Supercell, Ilkka helps other entrepreneurs as both an investor and as an active member of the Nordic startup community where he mentors and coaches other founders. Alongside his co-founder Mikko Kodisoja, he has established the We Foundation to fight social inequality and help disadvantaged children in Finland.Prior to founding Supercell, he was the CEO & co-founder of Finnish games developer Sumea, which was later acquired by Digital Chocolate, where he worked as President until 2010. Ilkka holds a Master of Science degree from the Helsinki University of Technology.
- Total investments:
- 65
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 2%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Ilkka Paananen invests in
Stages Ilkka Paananen invests in
Countries Ilkka Paananen invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
| Socials |
Round size
- Seed
- $2.5M–$16M
- Pre-Seed
- $1.2M–$2.7M
- Series A
- $8M–$65M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 9 (14%)
- Artificial Intelligence 8 (12%)
- FinTech 5 (8%)
- Internet 5 (8%)
- Information Technology 5 (8%)
Stage
- Seed 28 (43%)
- Series A 12 (18%)
- Pre-Seed 4 (6%)
- Series B 4 (6%)
- Angel 2 (3%)
Country
- Finland 15 (23%)
- United States 9 (14%)
- United Kingdom 5 (8%)
- Germany 4 (6%)
- Sweden 3 (5%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Europe’s next-generation AI lab for a quantum world. | $29.3M / Angel / May 05, 2026 | ||
| CodeWords is a technology startup working on AI systems for workflow automation. Their platform CodeWords lets anyone create automations and AI workflows by chatting with AI. Agemo's technology is designed to build code-based workflows and systems that can autonomously reason through software. | $9M / Seed / May 05, 2026 | ||
| BottleCap AI is a company that focuses on architecture-first, efficiency-focused basic LLMs designed to reason better per unit of CPU and enable previously impossible applications. | $7.5M / Seed / Jan 29, 2026 | ||
| Gradium.ai provides audio language models that enable natural, expressive, ultra-low latency voice interactions at scale, unifying speech generation, transcription, voice transformation, and dialogue in a single neural architecture.The platform acts as an audio-native counterpart to text-based large language models, processing tasks like real-timespeech-to-speech with delays under 200 milliseconds through optimized architectures, efficient tokenization, and hardware-aware deployments. It supports multilingual capabilities in English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese, with plans for expansion. | $70M / Seed / Dec 02, 2025 | ||
| Introducing nexos.ai — a powerful model gateway that delivers game-changing AI solutions. With advanced automation and intelligent decision making, nexos.ai helps simplify operations, boost productivity, and accelerate business growth. | $35.2M / Series A / Sep 29, 2025 | ||
| Lovable builds software that builds software. Lovable vision is to unlock human creativity by enabling anyone to create software. | $200M / Series A / Jul 17, 2025 | ||
| Ovido company specialises in supply chain and product data automation, with a focus on providing full product traceability and the establishment of Digital Product Passports (DPPs). | $2.8M / Seed / Jun 17, 2025 | ||
| Linear allows the user to manage software development and track bugs. Built for speed and efficiency.The founders started Linear from their own frustrations building software projects in successful high-growth companies like Airbnb, Coinbase and Uber. The founders wanted to create the tools that focus us and its team in making progress, not getin the way. Tools that are fast and efficient. Speed and performance were the main things Linear focuses on early on and keep focusing on that. | $82M / Series C / Jun 10, 2025 | ||
| Pixieray modernizes traditional eyeglass optics by introducing a pioneering adaptive solution giving anyone perfect vision. | Series A / Apr 28, 2025 | ||
| IXI was founded in 2021 in Espoo, Finland, with a simple premise: to create eyewear that provides optimal vision in every situation. Using cutting-edge technology, IXI glasses intelligently adapt to your eye movements, automatically focusing to help you see more—sharper—all within beautifully designed frames. Their first-generation product iscurrently in development, with more details to follow closer to launch. Sign up for early access here: https://ixieyewear.com | $36.5M / Series A / Apr 28, 2025 | ||
| See all 65 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
About Illusian Founder Office
Illusian is the Founder Office of people who have founded and scaled companies like Supercell, Zalando, Wolt, Aiven, Pigment, and Smartly. While the group is still busy running their businesses, they've aligned their networks, capital, and expertise to simultaneously support the next generation of builders.
Illusian Founder Office Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Ilkka Paananen
Co-Founder
|
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Mikko Savolainen
Partner
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Teemu Korhonen
Partner
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FAQ
What does Ilkka Paananen invest in?
Ilkka Paananen invests primarily in Software, Artificial Intelligence and FinTech startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 65 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in Finland. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What is Ilkka Paananen's check size?
Ilkka Paananen typically joins rounds of $2.5M–$16M at Seed, $1.2M–$2.7M at Pre-Seed and $8M–$65M at Series A. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Ilkka Paananen participates in.
How do I contact Ilkka Paananen?
Public channels for Ilkka Paananen include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Ilkka Paananen last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Ilkka Paananen closed in May 2026. Shizune tracks 65 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Sep 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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