Toggle search
Toggle menu
4.9K
5.5K
229
46.8K
VR & AR Wiki
Toggle preferences menu
Toggle personal menu
Not logged in
Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits.

Niantic Spatial

From VR & AR Wiki
More actions
Niantic Spatial
Information
Industry Geospatial AI, Augmented reality
Founded May 29, 2025 (spun off from Niantic)
Founder John Hanke
Headquarters San Francisco, California, United States
Notable Personnel Inhi Cho Suh (CEO), John Hanke (founder and executive chairman), Brian McClendon (CTO), Thomas Gewecke (president and COO)
Products Visual Positioning System, Scaniverse, Niantic Spatial SDK, SPZ, Ingress Prime, Peridot
Website https://www.nianticspatial.com


Niantic Spatial (legal name Niantic Spatial, Inc.) is an American geospatial AI company based in San Francisco that develops 3D mapping, reconstruction and camera-based positioning technology for augmented reality devices, AI agents and robots. It was formed on May 29, 2025, when Niantic completed the sale of its games business, including Pokemon Go, to the mobile game company Scopely and moved its mapping and AR technology into a separate company led by Niantic founder John Hanke.[1][2][3]

The company inherited the Visual Positioning System (VPS), the developer tools that began as Niantic Lightship, the 8th Wall WebAR platform, the Scaniverse scanning app and the AR games Ingress Prime and Peridot.[2][4][5] Its stated long-term goal is a "Large Geospatial Model" (LGM) that gives machines, from smart glasses to humanoid robots, a working model of physical places.[3] Its XR work includes a VPS partnership with Snap Inc. for Snapchat and Spectacles, SDK support for Meta Quest 3, and location-based AR projects with Meow Wolf and Kojima Productions. Its 2026 announcements have centered on robotics, energy and defense customers. In March 2026 former DocuSign president Inhi Cho Suh replaced Hanke as chief executive.[6][7]

Reviewed 4 October 2026. Founding, Scopely deal and funding, leadership, partnerships, 8th Wall wind-down, product claims and 2026 announcements checked against each cited source. About review dates.

History

Background at Niantic

Niantic began as Niantic Labs, an internal startup at Google, and spun out as an independent company in 2015. Hanke and McClendon had earlier worked together on Keyhole, the satellite imagery company that Google acquired in 2004 and developed into Google Earth and Google Maps.[4][3] Niantic launched its VPS in 2022.[4] On November 11, 2024, while the games were still part of the company, Niantic unveiled its technology business under a new platform brand, Niantic Spatial Platform, which grouped Niantic's capture, locate and augment tools; the Lightship ARDK tools for Unity were rebranded under it. At that point Niantic said VPS had one million locations available for production use.[8]

Spin-off from Niantic (2025)

On March 12, 2025, Scopely announced that it would acquire Niantic's games business for 3.5 billion US dollars. Niantic added 350 million US dollars in cash, which it said brought the total value to its equity holders to 3.85 billion US dollars.[2][9] The sale covered Pokemon Go, Pikmin Bloom, Monster Hunter Now and the Campfire and Wayfarer apps. Niantic's technology platform went to a new standalone entity, Niantic Spatial Inc., led by Hanke, which kept Ingress Prime and Peridot.[2] TechCrunch reported that the new company would start with 250 million US dollars in cash, 200 million from Niantic and 50 million from Scopely.[9]

Scopely closed the acquisition on May 29, 2025.[2] Niantic Spatial marked that day as its "day one". It said it was starting with 250 million US dollars in funding and with research groups in London and Oxford, and that its LGM was built on over 30 billion posed images from millions of locations. Hanke was chief executive and McClendon chief technology officer.[3] In the near term the company said it would serve enterprise customers in defined areas such as warehouses and entertainment sites.[3] In 2025 its chief scientist, Victor Prisacariu, was also appointed Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Oxford.[10]

AR partnerships (2025)

At Augmented World Expo USA 2025 in Long Beach, California, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced a multi-year partnership with Niantic Spatial in his June 10 keynote. The two companies said they would jointly build an AI map for AR glasses and AI agents, and Snap made an additional investment in Niantic Spatial; the announcement did not give the amount.[6][11] The plan was to bring Niantic Spatial's scanning and VPS to Lens Studio, Snapchat and Spectacles later in 2025. The companies said this would let 400,000 AR developers anchor Lenses at real-world locations with centimeter-level accuracy, and let Snapchat users scan new places to extend the map.[6] At the same show Niantic Spatial ran a preview demo of Peridot with Snap.[11]

During McClendon's AWE keynote on June 11, 2025, the company also announced a partnership with the immersive art company Meow Wolf. The project, still in development, planned to use VPS-powered location-based AR to open "portals" into the Meow Wolf story world. It was to start with a closed beta at Meow Wolf's Convergence Station in Denver later that year.[12]

Project Jade, first shown at AWE, turned Peridot's pet character Dot into an AI companion that wearers of Spectacles could talk to about a location. It combined Spectacles, VPS and an AI model. At Snap's Lens Fest on October 16, 2025, the company showed a version that could guide visitors through a venue, using a pathfinding map generated from 2D floor plans and conversational voice AI from Hume AI. Similar demos were running in its San Francisco, Seattle, London and Tokyo offices.[13]

On July 23, 2025, Niantic Spatial joined the Khronos Group as a Contributor member and took part in its 3D Formats Working Group. Its stated focus was bringing Gaussian splatting into open standards such as glTF.[14] On August 6, 2025, version 3.15 of the Niantic Spatial SDK added beta support for Meta Quest 3, described in the next section.[15]

Later in 2025 the company announced a deployment with simulator maker Aechelon Technology for United States Coast Guard flight training (September 8).[16] On September 23, at a Tokyo event marking ten years of Kojima Productions, Hideo Kojima and Hanke announced a partnership to apply Niantic Spatial's technology to real-world storytelling.[17] From November 12 to 19, Ingress ran an event tied to Paramount Pictures' film The Running Man, in the game's 13th anniversary month.[18] On December 16, Niantic Spatial and Vantor announced a combined positioning system. It pairs Niantic Spatial's ground-based VPS with Vantor's aerial Raptor software so that drones, vehicles and AR glasses can share coordinates without GPS. Field testing was planned for early 2026.[19]

8th Wall wind-down

In November 2025 the company announced that it would wind down 8th Wall, the WebAR platform Niantic had acquired in 2022.[20][5] Under the published schedule, account access, editing and exports for 8th Wall Studio, the Cloud Editor and Asset Lab ended on February 28, 2026. Published projects stay online until February 28, 2027, after which hosting is decommissioned.[21] In March 2026 Niantic Spatial released the 8th Wall engine framework as open source under an MIT license. Road to VR reported that the release includes the Face Effects, Image Targets and Sky Effects modules but not 8th Wall's SLAM tracking.[5]

Leadership change and physical AI (2026)

On March 10, 2026, Niantic Spatial named Coco Robotics, which operates a fleet of delivery robots, as its first robotics partner. VPS is used to improve the robots' localization in urban areas where GPS is unreliable.[22] On March 23, Hanke announced that Inhi Cho Suh would become chief executive on March 30, 2026, and that he would become executive chairman. Suh had spent more than 20 years at IBM and had been president at DocuSign.[7] The newsletter Lowpass described the change as Suh succeeding Niantic's founding CEO.[23]

On April 7, 2026, the company launched Scaniverse for businesses and VPS 2.0, described under Products below.[24][25] Its other 2026 announcements focused on defense, energy and robotics:

Date Partner or program Announcement
May 13, 2026 Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace VPS given "Awardable" status by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office's procurement marketplace[26]
May 27, 2026 Spexi Geospatial Drone imagery from Spexi's pilot network turned into 3D Gaussian splat reconstructions; Spexi named a preferred drone imagery provider for training Niantic Spatial's models[27]
June 8, 2026 Army DevX Autonomy 3D reconstruction platform and VPS designated award-ready[28]
July 13, 2026 ExxonMobil Interview on ExxonMobil's pilot of Niantic Spatial's VPS for locating equipment such as valves in industrial facilities[29]
July 20, 2026 Flexion, NVIDIA Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab Navigation policy for a humanoid robot trained in a Gaussian splat digital twin and transferred zero-shot to a real office[30]
September 21, 2026 Singapore Land Authority Memorandum of understanding to evaluate building Singapore's first national VPS map[31]
September 24, 2026 IARPA Solutions Marketplace 3D reconstruction platform and VPS each deemed Awardable[32]

On September 24, 2026, the company announced that Dave Citron, formerly Corporate Vice President of Product on Microsoft AI's Superintelligence team, would join the next day as chief product officer.[33]

Products

Niantic Spatial groups its services under four headings: Capture, Reconstruct, Localize and Understand. It describes the LGM as the engine beneath them and Scaniverse as its entry point.[4]

Product Type Notes
Visual Positioning System (VPS) Localization service Matches camera images against a map to give position and orientation. In scanned locations it gives 6DoF localization that the company describes as near-centimeter accurate. VPS 2.0 (April 2026) adds 3DoF positioning in unscanned areas by correcting GPS drift and dropout[24][25]
Scaniverse 3D capture app and web platform Captures spaces with phones or 360-degree cameras and generates VPS maps, meshes and Gaussian splats; mobile scans are recommended for areas up to 500 square meters. Exports meshes as FBX and splats as PLY or SPZ[24]
Niantic Spatial SDK (NSDK) Developer kit Successor to the Niantic Lightship ARDK. NSDK 4.0 (announced April 2026) is a single SDK for Unity, Swift and native Android, with early ROS 2 support on request[8][24]
SPZ Open file format Compressed Gaussian splat format open-sourced in late 2024. SPZ 4 (May 2026) replaced GZip with six parallel ZSTD streams; files remain about 10 times smaller than uncompressed PLY[34]
8th Wall WebAR platform Hosted service closed to logins on February 28, 2026; engine framework open-sourced under MIT license; hosted projects run until February 28, 2027[21][5]
Ingress Prime Location-based AR game Revamped version of Ingress, Niantic's first game; kept by Niantic Spatial after the Scopely sale[2][18]
Peridot AR pet game Kept by Niantic Spatial; its Dot character is used in the Project Jade companion demos on Spectacles[2][13]

XR work

Most of Niantic Spatial's AR technology rests on VPS. Once a device knows its exact position and heading, virtual content can stay anchored to a real place, and several people can see the same content in the same spot.[6] The Snap partnership targets this at phone AR in Snapchat and at Spectacles.[6]

For headsets, SDK version 3.15 (August 2025) uses the Meta Quest 3 Passthrough Camera API to read the front RGB cameras. It brings VPS, on-device 3D mapping, live meshing, semantic segmentation, object detection and occlusion to the mixed reality headset. The company said the release allows co-located experiences across phones, Meta Quest 3 and Magic Leap 2, and listed indoor navigation, training, field collaboration and site mapping as target uses.[15] Shortly before the spin-off, on May 9, 2025, Niantic took the Peridot mixed reality app "Hello, Dot" out of early access and released it globally as a free app for Meta Quest 3.[35]

The company also uses its own tools for browser AR. At AWE 2025 it built an AR portal for its booth in 8th Wall, with Scaniverse scans and VPS anchoring the content to the booth entrance so visitors needed no app.[36]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Niantic Spatial Privacy Policy". Niantic Spatial. 2025-05-29. https://www.nianticspatial.com/legal/privacy. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 "Scopely to acquire Niantic including Pokémon GO". Scopely. 2025-03-12. 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. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "Day One for Niantic Spatial". Niantic Spatial. 2025-05-29. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/niantic-spatial-day-one. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "About Niantic Spatial". Niantic Spatial. https://www.nianticspatial.com/about. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Scott Hayden (2026-03-10). "Niantic's WebAR Creation Platform '8th Wall' Goes Open Source as Hosted Services Go Offline". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/niantic-webar-platform-8th-wall-open-source/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 "Niantic Spatial and Snap's Multi-Year Strategic Partnership to Build AI-Powered Map". Niantic Spatial. 2025-06-10. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/vps-snap-investment. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 John Hanke (2026-03-23). "Welcoming Inhi Cho Suh as CEO of Niantic Spatial". Niantic Spatial. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/welcome-inhi-cho-suh. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Introducing Niantic Spatial Platform". Niantic Spatial. 2024-11-11. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/niantic-spatial-platform. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Ivan Mehta (2025-03-12). "Pokémon GO maker Niantic is selling its games division to Scopely for $3.5B". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/12/pokemon-go-maker-niantic-is-selling-its-games-division-to-scopely-for-3-5b. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  10. ↑ "Ground Truth: An Interview with Niantic Spatial's Chief Scientist Victor Prisacariu". Niantic Spatial. 2025-09-10. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/victor-prisacariu. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "Niantic Spatial unveils Snap partnership and demos at AWE 2025". Auganix. 2025-06-11. https://www.auganix.org/ar-news-niantic-snap-partnership/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  12. ↑ "Meow Wolf and Niantic Spatial Announce Plans to Explore an Expansion of the Meow Wolf Universe". Niantic Spatial. 2025-06-11. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/meow-wolf-partnership. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Asim Ahmed (2025-10-16). "A New Sense of Direction: How Niantic Spatial's Location-Aware AI Companion is Evolving". Niantic Spatial. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/project-jade-lens-fest. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  14. ↑ "Niantic Spatial Joins Khronos Group to Advance Geospatial AI and 3D Standards". Niantic Spatial. 2025-07-23. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/khronos-group-member-geospatial-ai. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Niantic Spatial SDK Brings Immersive Reality to Meta Quest 3 with the Passthrough Camera API". Niantic Spatial. 2025-08-06. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/niantic-spatial-sdk-meta-quest-3-passthrough-camera-api. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  16. ↑ "Niantic Spatial and Aechelon Technology Partner to Enhance U.S. Coast Guard Training". Niantic Spatial. 2025-09-08. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/uscg-simulator. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  17. ↑ Brian Rose (2025-09-23). "KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS and Niantic Spatial Team Up to Redefine Immersive Entertainment". Niantic Spatial. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/kojima-productions-partnership. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Asim Ahmed (2025-11-11). "Paramount Taps Niantic Spatial's Ingress for 'The Running Man' Immersive Storytelling Mission". Niantic Spatial. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/ingress-paramount-collaboration. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  19. ↑ "Niantic Spatial and Vantor Partner to Deliver Unified Air-to-Ground Positioning in GPS-Denied Areas". Niantic Spatial. 2025-12-16. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/vantor. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  20. ↑ "8th Wall to Shut Down After Seven Years of Advancing WebAR". Remix Reality. 2025-11-20. https://www.remixreality.com/8th-wall-to-shut-down-after-seven-years-of-advancing-webar/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 "Thank You For Building With Us: The Next Chapter for 8th Wall". Niantic Spatial. https://info.nianticspatial.com/blog/next-chapter. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  22. ↑ "Niantic Spatial Partners with Coco Robotics to Accelerate the Future of Autonomous Delivery". Niantic Spatial. 2026-03-10. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/coco-robotics. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  23. ↑ Janko Roettgers (2026-04-09). "Niantic Spatial's John Hanke: The don't-call-it an exit interview". Lowpass. https://www.lowpass.cc/p/niantic-spatial-john-hanke-ceo-exit-interview. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 "Mapping the World For Machines with Scaniverse". Niantic Spatial. 2026-04-07. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/scaniverse. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 "Niantic Spatial Launches Scaniverse and VPS 2.0". Auganix. 2026-04-07. https://www.auganix.org/ar-news-nianctic-scaniverse-vps-2-0/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  26. ↑ "Niantic Spatial's Visual Positioning System Assessed "Awardable" on the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace". Niantic Spatial. 2026-05-13. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/tradewinds-vps. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  27. ↑ "Niantic Spatial and Spexi Partner to Turn Drone Imagery Into Intelligence for Physical AI". Niantic Spatial. 2026-05-27. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/spexi. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  28. ↑ "Niantic Spatial Designated Award-Ready Through the Army Applications Laboratory DevX Autonomy Marketplace". Niantic Spatial. 2026-06-08. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/army-devx-awardable. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  29. ↑ Carmen Goldstein (2026-07-13). "How ExxonMobil is Piloting Visual Positioning to Transform Field Operations". Niantic Spatial. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/exxonmobil-visual-positioning-field-operations. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  30. ↑ Niantic Spatial and Flexion (2026-07-20). "Niantic Spatial, Flexion, and NVIDIA: Closing the Sim2Real Gap for Humanoids". Niantic Spatial. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/flexion-humanoid-real2sim-sim2real. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  31. ↑ "Niantic Spatial and the Singapore Land Authority: Working Together to Explore Creating Singapore's First National Visual Positioning System Map". Niantic Spatial. 2026-09-21. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/singapore-land-authority. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  32. ↑ "Niantic Spatial Deemed Awardable Through the IARPA Solutions Marketplace". Niantic Spatial. 2026-09-24. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/iarpa-awardable. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  33. ↑ "Dave Citron joins Niantic Spatial as Chief Product Officer". Niantic Spatial. 2026-09-24. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/dave-citron. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  34. ↑ "SPZ 4 is here: leaner, faster, and more future-proof". Niantic Spatial. 2026-05-05. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/spz4. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  35. ↑ Asim Ahmed (2025-05-09). "Niantic's Peridot launches "Hello, Dot" globally as free mixed-reality toy with all-new gameplay". Niantic Spatial. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/peridot-hello-dot-global. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  36. ↑ Ian Curtis (2025-07-14). "Ground Truth: Turning places into intelligent interfaces with VPS". Niantic Spatial. https://www.nianticspatial.com/blog/vps-awe. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
Retrieved from "https://vrarwiki.com/index.php?title=Niantic_Spatial&oldid=46327"