Niantic, Inc. ( ) was an American software development company and video game developer based in San Francisco that developed augmented reality mobile games Ingress, Pokémon Go, and others. The company was formed as Niantic Labs in 2010 as an internal startup within Google. The company became an independent entity in October 2015 when Google restructured under Alphabet Inc.
In 2025, Niantic was acquired by Scopely, with its team operating as Scopely Explore, and its non-video game business spun off as Niantic Spatial.
History Founding
John Hanke worked at Keyhole in 2001, a software development company specializing in geospatial data visualization applications. Hanke was hired by Google in 2004 as part of Google's acquisition of Keyhole. Hanke led Google's Geo division, which was Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Street View. The move to the Geo division included Keyhole employees such as Brian McClendon and Bill Kilday.
Hanke left the Geo division in October 2010 to form Niantic Labs, an internal startup within Google. The company's namesake is the whaling vessel Niantic, which came to San Francisco during the California gold rush in the 1840s. At the time Ingress was launched, Niantic had 35 employees.
Private company The company spun out of Google in October 2015, soon after Google's announcement of its restructuring as Alphabet Inc. Niantic also announced that Google, Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company would invest up to $30 million in Series-A funding, $20 million upfront and the remaining $10 million in financing conditioned upon the company achieving certain milestones to support the growth of the company and its products. In February 2016, Niantic announced that it had secured an additional $5 million in Series A funding including investment from venture capital firms Alsop Louie Partners and You & Mr. Jones Brandtech Ventures, as well as angel investors Lucas Nealan, Cyan Banister, and Scott Banister. While adding more support for the growth of the company, this investment enabled Niantic to bring in strategic industry pioneers including the addition of Gilman Louie to its board.
Acquisitions and investments In November 2017, Niantic raised $200 million in Series B funding from multiple investors, led by Spark Capital. Spark's Megan Quinn joined Niantic's board of directors during this investment round. Niantic acquired Evertoon, an app that lets users make short, personalized films. According to the company's announcement, the acquisition is meant to help build social systems. At the time of the acquisition, Evertoon was 18 months old and had five employees.
In February 2018, Niantic announced that it had acquired augmented reality company Escher Reality, a team focused on building persistent, cross-platform, multi-user experiences. Hanke stated that Niantic planned to allow third-party developers to build AR games similar to Pokémon Go.
In June 2018, Niantic announced the acquisition of computer vision and machine learning company Matrix Mill. The Matrix Mill team has spent years developing deep neural networks to infer 3D information about the surrounding world, enabling augmented reality occlusion. The acquisition advances Niantic's efforts to deliver planet-scale AR and provide realistic AR experiences.
In July 2018, Niantic announced the acquisition of LA-based gaming studio, Seismic Games. The gaming studio consists of industry veterans from EA/Pandemic and Activision.
In November 2018, Niantic invested in DigiLens alongside Mitsubishi Chemical's Diamond Edge Ventures. The investment was to help DigiLens develop holographic waveguide displays for augmented reality applications.
In January 2019, it was reported that Niantic had raised an additional $245 million in a Series C funding round. The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) but also included investments from strategic partners such as AXiomatic Gaming and Samsung Ventures. The investment valued the company at $3.7 billion, excluding the investment itself.
In June 2019, Niantic announced the acquisition of London-based development studio Sensible Object. Niantic CEO Hanke stated that the acquisition "significantly advances [Niantic's] efforts in developing a wide range of gaming experiences that bring the physical and digital world closer together". In March 2020, Niantic acquired 3D world-scanning software company 6D.ai. In January 2021, Niantic acquired Mayhem, a community gaming platform.
In 2021, Niantic acquired Scaniverse, a 3D scanning app, and Lowkey, a social gaming platform in which users can record and share gameplay moments. In 2022, Niantic announced the acquisition of 8th Wall, a WebAR development platform, and NZXR, an augmented reality studio.
In 2023, Niantic closed its Los Angeles studio and laid off 230 employees.
Lightship In June 2018, Niantic shared a sneak peek behind the technology they had been developing for years: the Niantic Real World Platform. The core platform consists of a suite of tools including: AR Cloud, anti-cheat security, POI data, IAP, social, analytics, CRM, sponsorship, and more. Niantic mentioned that they intend to open up the platform in the future for use by third-party developers.
In early 2021, Niantic rebranded the Niantic Real World Platform as Lightship. In November 2021, Niantic launched the Lightship software development kit (SDK) for augmented reality based on Unity. The company raised $300 million from Coatue Management for further development of Lightship and Niantic's "real-world metaverse", valuing the company at $9 billion.
Scopely acquisition On February 18, 2025, Bloomberg reported that Niantic was in talks to sell its video game business to Scopely, a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Arabian Savvy Games Group, for $3.5 billion. On March 12, the acquisition was confirmed. In April 2025, 68 employees were laid off as part of the company's restructuring. The acquisition was completed on May 29, 2025, with a press release stating the acquired game development teams as the Niantic games team. Niantic's geospatial business was spun off into a separate company, Niantic Spatial Inc. A year after the acquisition, the Scopely team dropped the Niantic name, rebranding to Scopely Explore.
Products
Ingress Ingress, Niantic's first augmented reality game, was launched in November 2012 on Android as an invitation-only application. It later received a public release in October 2013. An iOS version was released in July 2014.
Early versions of Ingress eschewed practices traditionally seen in mobile app development, such as advertisements and in-app purchases. However, Niantic later added in-app purchases to the game after their split from Google in 2015. At the time, Niantic founder John Hanke called Ingress a "proof of concept", and mentioned that further updates could allow the packaging of application programming interfaces (APIs) from the Ingress application to entice developers. Companies that partnered with Niantic were marketed via the narrative of Ingress, rather than through direct marketing techniques.
In November 2018, Niantic released a revamped version of the game branded as Ingress Prime. The game's source code was completely rewritten within the Unity game engine. Niantic continued to market the older Ingress game as a separate downloadable application named Scanner [REDACTED]. The intention of retaining the older Ingress game was to help players transition to Prime; feature parity between both games was reached in 2019.
In collaboration with Japanese animation studio Craftar Studios, Ingress: The Animation, a television series based on the game, was aired in Japan on Fuji TV's +Ultra programming block in October 2018. The series premiered globally on Netflix on April 30, 2019.
Pokémon Go In September 2015, it was announced that Niantic had been developing Pokémon Go in partnership with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for iOS and Android devices. Tatsuo Nomura, who joined Niantic in 2015 after developing the Google Maps: Pokémon Challenge, acted as director and product manager for the game.
Pokémon Go was released in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States in July 2016, and received a staggered rollout in other countries throughout the remainder of 2016. The game became an overnight global phenomenon, significantly increasing the use and visibility of augmented reality technology. In addition to topping app store charts in most regions, Apple Inc. announced that Pokémon Go had become the most downloaded app in its first week ever, only to be surpassed by Super Mario Run later that year. Multiple reports indicated that users spent more time on Pokémon Go than on popular social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tinder, and Instagram. In one month, Pokémon Go was downloaded more than 100 million times, and the game's daily revenues soon exceeded $10 million.
Two months after the game's launch, John Hanke announced at Apple's September keynote that Pokémon Go had exceeded 500 million downloads worldwide, and that players around the world had collectively walked over 4.6 billion kilometers. By December, it was announced that this distance had nearly doubled to over 8.7 billion kilometers, meaning that players had collectively walked further than the distance from Earth to Pluto. By the end of February 2017, Pokémon Go had surpassed over 650 million downloads. During Pokémon Gos Adventure Week in-game promo in May 2017, Niantic announced that the game's players had collectively walked over 15.8 billion kilometers, roughly the distance from Earth to the edge of the Solar System. On June 8, 2017, it was revealed that Pokémon Go had been downloaded over 750 million times globally. In 2019, Pokémon Go crossed the 1 billion threshold for total downloads.
The game's two primary revenue streams are in-app purchases and regional partnerships. Pokémon Go has established several partnerships with major companies across the globe, including Verizon and Starbucks in the United States, Reliance Jio in India, SoftBank and 7-Eleven in Japan, and McDonald's in Canada.
Pikmin Bloom On October 26, 2021, Nintendo and Niantic announced the launch of a new smartphone app for the Pikmin franchise called Pikmin Bloom. The project is an augmented reality-based adventure set in the real world that incorporating small creatures named Pikmin. The app was the first developed by Niantic's Tokyo division, established in 2018. Pikmin Bloom was released worldwide on November 2, 2021, following a series of soft launches over the course of the previous week.
Peridot On April 14, 2022, Niantic announced the launch of Peridot, a direct project from Niantic. Peridot's open beta began in Norway on July 28, 2022, and the app was released worldwide on May 9, 2023. In April 2026, Niantic's successor company Niantic Spatial announced that the apps would be removed from all iOS and Android devices on May 14, 2026, and that the game's servers would be officially closed on August 31, 2026.
Monster Hunter Now On April 17, 2023, Niantic announced the development of a game with Capcom based on the Monster Hunter franchise, titled Monster Hunter Now. The game was released in September 2023.
Former projects In 2012, Niantic launched its first product, Field Trip, a location-based mobile app that acted as a "guide to the cool, hidden, and unique things in the world around you." In July 2019, Niantic announced it would shut down the app later that year, and the game was subsequently removed from the iOS and Android app stores.
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