TechCrunch just released the story that creators of Angry Birds, Rovio, has raised an astonishing $42 million round in funding. The funding has been raised from Accel Partners, Atomico Ventures as well as Felicis Ventures. The round was co-led by Accel Partners as well as Atomico Ventures. Niklas Zennström, the co-founder of Skype will be joining Rovio's board.

Rovio will use the money grow more internationally across markets including mobile, social media and other platforms. They will do this through merchandising, media production and partnerhsips. Rovio has earlier stated that they will be rolling out the Facebook game in May this year.

Just earlier this week we debated on the potential revenue of the company that it could easily reach 50 million euros by June 2011 (when Rovio's fiscal year ends).

A huge round for Rovio, that is already profitable for sure and could easily value the company in the hundreds of millions. Quite a turn around for someone who was close to bankruptcy just a few years ago.

Update 15.50 EET on March 10th:
Rovio just published the press release about the investement, below are some quotes.

“With Angry Birds, we have successfully launched not only a strong new brand, but also a whole new entertainment franchise,” said Mikael Hed, CEO and co-founder of Rovio. “Angry Birds will continue to grow, and we aim to create more similar success stories. We will strengthen the position of Rovio and continue building our franchises in gaming, merchandising and broadcast media.”

“The proliferation of touchscreen smartphones and tablets has lead to a huge growth in demand for mobile entertainment”, said Rich Wong, Partner at Accel Partners. “These growth trends are changing the entire media field, and Rovio is perfectly positioned to drive this change. We believe this is just the beginning.”

“This investment will give Rovio wings,” said Niklas Zennström, CEO and Founder of Atomico. “The company has an outstanding management team and is a category winner with huge potential, making it precisely the kind of company we like to back. Angry Birds is one of the fastest-growing online products I’ve seen, growing even faster than Skype, and the company has done a brilliant job of extending it across different platforms and merchandise. I’m really looking forward to joining the board, and helping the team to fulfill its ambitions.”

“The passionate consumer response to Angry Birds has been nothing short of a phenomenon, proving that the powerful consumer experiences can win dedicated players across all demographics,” said Aydin Senkut, Managing director of Felicis Ventures. “We’re very proud of the amazing success that the Rovio team has experienced since we began working together last summer. “

It seems that Rovio is very much growing the business into a full entertainment franchise and while doing so, continuing work on creating new hits for the future. A really fantastic piece of news for Rovio!