Niantic
| Niantic | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Type | Private company |
| Industry | Augmented reality, Geospatial AI, Video games (until 2025) |
| Founded | 2010 (as an internal Google startup); spun out 2015 |
| Founder | John Hanke |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Notable Personnel | John Hanke (Founder), Brian McClendon (CTO) |
| Products | Ingress, Pokemon Go, Pikmin Bloom, Monster Hunter Now, Lightship ARDK, Visual Positioning System |
| Website | https://nianticlabs.com |
Niantic is an American Augmented Reality and software company best known for the location-based mobile games Pokemon Go, Ingress, and Pikmin Bloom, and for the Niantic Lightship developer platform and Visual Positioning System (VPS). The company was founded by John Hanke in 2010 as an internal startup within Google and spun out as an independent company in 2015 when Google reorganized under Alphabet Inc.[1][2]
In 2025 Niantic split in two. It sold its games business, including Pokemon Go, Pikmin Bloom, and Monster Hunter Now, to the mobile game company Scopely for 3.5 billion US dollars, a deal that closed on May 29, 2025. The remaining augmented reality and mapping operation was reorganized as a separate company, Niantic Spatial, Inc., which keeps Hanke and focuses on geospatial AI, the VPS, and 3D mapping of the physical world.[3][4]
History
Keyhole and Google origins
John Hanke co-founded Keyhole, a geospatial data visualization company, in 2001. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004, and its technology became the basis of Google Earth and Google Maps. Hanke joined Google through the acquisition and led the company's Geo division, which covered Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View.[1] In October 2010 he left that division to form Niantic Labs, an internal startup inside Google built around the intersection of maps, mobile phones, and games.[1]
Ingress and the spin-out
Niantic's first product was Ingress, an augmented reality multiplayer game tied to real-world locations. It was released on Android by invitation in November 2012, opened publicly in October 2013, and reached iOS in July 2014.[1] Ingress players visited physical landmarks to capture in-game "portals," and the locations they submitted became an early dataset of points of interest that Niantic later reused for other games.[1]
The company spun out of Google in October 2015, shortly after Google announced its restructuring as Alphabet Inc. Niantic raised a Series A round in which Google, Nintendo, and The Pokemon Company committed up to 30 million US dollars (20 million upfront with 10 million to follow), with a further 5 million US dollars added in early 2016.[1]
Pokemon Go
Niantic released Pokemon Go, developed with Nintendo and The Pokemon Company, in July 2016 in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, followed by a staged worldwide rollout. The game uses a phone's GPS and camera to place Pokemon at real-world locations and let players catch them through the device's display, building on the location and points-of-interest data Niantic had gathered from Ingress.[1] Pokemon Go became one of the most commercially successful mobile games ever made. By June 2022 the market analytics firm Sensor Tower reported that the game had passed 6 billion US dollars in global lifetime player spending on the App Store and Google Play, on 678 million downloads.[5]
The game's scale also drew scrutiny over how Niantic collected and used location data, a concern that resurfaced when the games business was later sold.[6]
Later games
Niantic followed Pokemon Go with more location-based titles. Pikmin Bloom, a walking game made with Nintendo, launched worldwide on November 2, 2021.[1] Monster Hunter Now, an augmented reality game based on Capcom's Monster Hunter series, was released in September 2023.[1] The company also built Peridot, a pet-simulation game, and the community apps Campfire and Wayfarer, the latter a tool players use to review and submit real-world points of interest.[7]
2025 split: Scopely sale and Niantic Spatial
On March 12, 2025, Niantic announced that it would sell its games business to Scopely, a mobile game company majority owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, for 3.5 billion US dollars. With an additional 350 million US dollars distributed from Niantic's balance sheet, the company put the total value to equity holders at about 3.85 billion US dollars.[3][7] The sale covered Pokemon Go, Pikmin Bloom, and Monster Hunter Now along with the Campfire and Wayfarer apps, and more than 400 Niantic employees moved to Scopely.[4][8] The transaction closed on May 29, 2025.[4]
At closing, Niantic's augmented reality and geospatial technology was carved out into a new, independent company, Niantic Spatial, Inc., led by John Hanke. It was funded with 250 million US dollars, of which 200 million came from Niantic's balance sheet and 50 million was invested by Scopely; Niantic's original investors remained shareholders. Niantic Spatial kept the AR games Ingress (as Ingress Prime) and Peridot as platform applications.[3][7]
Technology
Lightship and the Visual Positioning System
Niantic packaged the technology behind Pokemon Go into a developer platform called Niantic Lightship. The Lightship Augmented Reality Developer Kit (ARDK), a cross-platform Unity-based SDK for Android and iOS, opened to developers worldwide on November 8, 2021. Its core capabilities are real-time mapping, scene understanding (such as semantic segmentation and depth), and multiplayer sharing.[2][9]
The Visual Positioning System (VPS) is the part of Lightship that determines a device's precise position and orientation by matching a single camera frame against a pre-scanned 3D map of a location. This camera-based localization is more accurate than GPS and lets developers anchor persistent virtual objects to real places so that different users see the same content in the same spot, a building block for shared and persistent Augmented Reality.[9][2] Niantic built its location maps in part from player scans gathered through its games and apps. Alongside the 2021 launch the company started Niantic Ventures, a 20 million US dollar fund to invest in AR companies.[2]
Geospatial AI and the Large Geospatial Model
As Niantic Spatial, the company describes its work as geospatial AI: building a "third-generation digital map" and a Large Geospatial Model (LGM) trained on a large dataset of real-world spatial imagery.[3] Its products are organized around capturing 3D data from ground and aerial sources, reconstructing high-fidelity digital twins, vision-based localization for machines, and semantic querying of 3D space. The company targets robotics, logistics, construction, energy, and defense in addition to consumer AR.[10] For 3D reconstruction it uses techniques including Gaussian splatting, the method behind its Scaniverse scanning app.[3]
Niantic Spatial and AR partnerships
On June 10, 2025, Niantic Spatial and Snap Inc announced a multi-year partnership to build an AI-powered map for AR glasses and AI agents, with Snap making a capital investment on top of the company's existing 250 million US dollars. The deal brings Niantic Spatial's VPS and scanning technology to Snap's Snapchat app, Snap Spectacles glasses, and Lens Studio developer tool, giving Snap's roughly 400,000 AR developers a way to place location-anchored content at large numbers of real-world sites.[11]
In March 2026 Niantic Spatial named Inhi Cho Suh as chief executive officer, with John Hanke moving to executive chairman. Brian McClendon, a co-founder of Keyhole and a former Google Maps leader, is the company's chief technology officer.[10]
Products
| Product | Released | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ingress | 2012 (Android), 2013 public | AR game | Niantic's first title; location-based portal-capture game later relaunched as Ingress Prime; retained by Niantic Spatial[1][7] |
| Pokemon Go | July 2016 | AR game | Location-based game made with Nintendo and The Pokemon Company; over 6 billion US dollars in lifetime player spending by 2022; sold to Scopely in 2025[5][7] |
| Pikmin Bloom | November 2, 2021 | AR / walking app | Walking game made with Nintendo; sold to Scopely in 2025[1][7] |
| Lightship ARDK | November 8, 2021 | Developer SDK | Unity-based AR developer kit with real-time mapping, understanding, and sharing[2] |
| Visual Positioning System | 2022 | AR localization | Camera-based 6DoF localization against pre-scanned 3D maps for persistent AR[9] |
| Peridot | 2023 | AR game | AR pet-simulation game; retained by Niantic Spatial[7] |
| Monster Hunter Now | September 2023 | AR game | Based on Capcom's Monster Hunter; sold to Scopely in 2025[1][7] |
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 "Niantic, Inc.". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niantic,_Inc..
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "Niantic Opens Lightship Platform Globally, Empowering Developers to Build Their Visions for the Real-World Metaverse". November 8, 2021. https://nianticlabs.com/news/lightshiplaunch.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "Niantic's Next Chapter: Introducing a New Home for Niantic Games and a New Future for Niantic Spatial Inc.". March 12, 2025. https://nianticlabs.com/news/niantic-next-chapter?hl=en.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Why Scopely Is Teaming Up With Niantic Games". May 29, 2025. https://www.scopely.com/en/news/why-scopely-is-teaming-up-with-niantic-games.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Pokemon GO Catches $6 Billion in Lifetime Player Spending". June 2022. https://sensortower.com/blog/pokemon-go-6-billion-revenue.
- ↑ Template:Cite news
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 Template:Cite news
- ↑ "Scopely to acquire Niantic, including Pokemon GO". March 12, 2025. https://www.scopely.com/en/news/scopely-to-acquire-niantic-games-business-which-includes-pokemon-go-one-of-the-most-successful-mobile-games-of-all-time.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Template:Cite news
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 "About Niantic Spatial". https://www.nianticspatial.com/en/about.
- ↑ "Niantic Spatial and Snap's Multi-Year Strategic Partnership to Build AI-Powered Map". June 10, 2025. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/vps-snap-investment.