Niantic Raised $245M in Series C Funding

nianticNiantic, Inc., a San Francisco, CA-based provider of mobile augmented reality (AR) experiences and the creator of Pokémon GO, among others, is raising $245m in Series C financing.

The round (we recently anticpated here) was led by IVP, with additional strategic investment from aXiomatic Gaming, Battery Ventures, Causeway Media Partners, CRV, and Samsung Ventures.

The financing brings the company’s post-round valuation to nearly $4 billion.

Niantic will use the capital to invest in advanced AR capabilities, machine learning, the Niantic Real World Platform, and continuing to broaden its game offerings. The company will be accelerating staffing for initiatives such as the Niantic Real World Platform, which powers its current suite of games and was recently opened for the $1 million Niantic Beyond Reality Developer Contest. The platform will eventually be made widely available to developers around the world.

Led by John Hanke, co-founder and CEO, Niantic builds mobile real-world fun, exploration, discovery and social interaction experiences. Originally incubated within Google, the company spun out in 2015 with investments from Google, The Pokemon Company, and Nintendo, and raised an additional $200m in financing in 2017 from Spark Capital, Founders Fund, Meritech, Javelin Venture Partners, You & Mr. Jones and NetEase, Inc. The company’s platform powers augmented reality games Pokémon GO and Ingress Prime, which are available on the App Store and Google Play. Harry Potter: Wizard’s Unite is Niantic, Inc.’s third game and is being co-developed and co-published with WB Games and will be published in 2019.

FinSMEs

16/01/2019

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