Niantic

Niantic, Inc. is an American software development company and game publisher headquartered in San Francisco, focused on augmented reality and geolocation technologies. The company was founded in 2010 as Niantic Labs, an internal Google startup created by John Hanke. In October 2015, following Google’s reorganization under Alphabet Inc., Niantic became an independent entity. Its best-known products are the games Ingress, Pokémon GO, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now. Beyond games, the company developed an AR developer platform named Lightship, offering tools for building augmented reality applications. Over the following years Niantic raised funding across Series A–C rounds and from Coatue Management, reaching a valuation of around 9 billion dollars in 2021. In 2025 its gaming business was acquired by Scopely for 3.5 billion dollars, with the development teams operating as Scopely Explore. Its geospatial and AR operations were spun off into a separate company, Niantic Spatial Inc.