Rumors of Niantic, the owner of the popular game Pokémon Go, negotiating a $3.5 billion business sale have been officially confirmed today, with a few twists from the initial speculations. The deal does not involve selling the entire company, but rather Niantic is selling a portfolio of 3 games – Pokémon GO, Pikmin Bloom, Monster Hunter Now, and the development team – to the mobile game company Scopely, known for the Monopoly Go game, for a total of $3.5 billion, including Niantic’s cash reserves of $350 million, amounting to a total value of $3.85 billion. Niantic stated that Scopely specializes in live service games, and with their experience managing large gaming franchises like Monopoly, they are well-equipped to take in the Pokémon Go team and other games transitioning under their umbrella.
Meanwhile, Niantic Inc., originally focusing on their expertise in geospatial technology, will spin off this division into a new company named Niantic Spatial Inc. Founding member John Hanke will assume the role of CEO at Niantic Spatial, with Niantic Inc. investing $200 million and an additional $50 million from Scopely. The goal of Niantic Spatial is to create a spatial AI model that understands physical world aspects, building upon Niantic’s original mapping system expertise (John Hanke founded Keyhole before selling it to Google in 2004, rebranding it as Google Earth). This aligns with Niantic’s announcement at the end of 2024 to develop predictive artificial intelligence that can anticipate areas even without prior photographic data.
Niantic Spatial will continue to offer legacy games like Ingress Prime and Peridot, which were not included in the Scopely deal, along with non-gaming products such as the Niantic Spatial Platform and Visual Positioning System (VPS).
TLDR: Niantic is selling a portfolio of games and the development team to Scopely for $3.5 billion, while spinning off its geospatial division into Niantic Spatial Inc. under the leadership of John Hanke to focus on building spatial AI models.
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