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Niantic Spatial

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Niantic Spatial, Inc.
TypePrivate
Industry
FoundedMay 29, 2025; 14 months ago (2025-05-29)
FounderJohn Hanke
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
,
U.S.
Key people
Websitenianticspatial.com

Niantic Spatial, Inc. (ny-AN-tik SPAY-shəl)[2] is an American-based physical artificial intelligence (AI) and spatial computing company headquartered in San Francisco. The company develops geospatial world models that gives machines understanding of the physical world through 3D reconstruction, visual positioning, and semantic understanding.[3] They support enterprise customers in robotics, defense, and utilities.

The company was formed in May 2025 as a spin-off from Niantic, Inc., following the sale of Niantic's licensed games to Scopely (now operating as Scopely Explore). Niantic Spatial retained its original franchises Ingress and Peridot alongside its augmented reality and geospatial technology.[4]

History

[edit]

Founding

[edit]

The technology and team behind Niantic Spatial originated at Niantic, Inc., which was initially an internal startup at Google in 2010.[5] As Niantic grew, the company evolved along two complementary paths: one focused on creating augmented reality location-based games and another dedicated to advancing AR, AI, and mapping technology.[6][7]

On March 12, 2025, Niantic announced an agreement to sell its mobile games division for $3.5 billion to Scopely.[8] The deal was finalized on May 29, 2025, and Niantic Spatial was spun out from the Scopely acquisition.[9] Pokémon GO, Monster Hunter Now, Pikmin Bloom, and their companion apps were transitioned to Scopely while Ingress and Peridot were restructured under Niantic Spatial.

Niantic Spatial was initially capitalized with $250 million, consisting of $200 million from Niantic's balance sheet and a $50 million investment from Scopely.[10] All of Niantic's original investors remained shareholders in the new entity.

Niantic Spatial's founding leadership team included John Hanke as chief executive officer, Brian McClendon as chief technology officer, and Thomas Gewecke as president and chief operating officer. Hanke and McClendon previously founded Keyhole[11] which became the foundation for Google Earth and Google Maps. Gewecke was previously a senior business executive with tenure at Warner Brothers and Sony Music.[12]

On March 30, 2026, Hanke appointed Inhi Cho Suh as chief executive officer, transitioning to the role of executive chairman. He remains an executive of the company and continues to serve as chairman of the board.[13]

Corporate history

[edit]

In June 2025, Snap Inc. made an undisclosed investment into Niantic Spatial. They also announced a multi-year partnership which will integrate Niantic Spatial's scanning technology and VPS into Snap's ecosystem and focus on jointly building a next-generation AI map.[14] In the same month Meow Wolf announced they are teaming up with Niantic Spatial to bring the Meow Wolf Universe globally anywhere in the world using Niantic Spatial's AR and VPS technology.[15]

In September 2025, Aechelon Technology announced that it was partnering with Niantic Spatial to use their geospatial AI and reconstruction technology to enhance U.S. Coast Guard training by integrating real-world 3D scans into flight simulators.[16] Later that month, Hideo Kojima announced teaming up with Niantic Spatial to redefine immersive entertainment by bringing Kojima Productions interactive storytelling into the real world using Niantic Spatial's technology.[17]

In December 2025, geospatial intelligence firm Vantor partnered with Niantic Spatial to develop a unified air-to-ground visual positioning solution for GPS-denied environments.[18]

In March 2026, autonomous-delivery company Coco Robotics announced it was teaming up with Niantic Spatial to use their VPS technology to help their food delivery robots navigate in dense urban environments where GPS is often degraded.[19]

In May 2026, drone-imagery company Spexi Geospatial partnered with Niantic Spatial to turn large-scale drone capture into geo-referenced, city-scale 3D models for use in physical AI.[20]

In July 2026, ExxonMobil started piloting how Niantic Spatial's VPS technology can transform the way field technicians operate at their oil refineries.[21] Later in July, robotics company Flexion AI, NVIDIA, and Niantic Spatial partnered to showcase how geometrically accurate 3D world models help close the sim-to-real gap in robotics simulation training.[22]

Technology and applications

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Platform technology

[edit]

Niantic Spatial's platform services are powered by a large geospatial model (LGM), spatial counterparts to large language models (LLMs), designed to give machines a contextual understanding of space and structure.[23] Their LGM is built on a proprietary database of over 30 billion posed images that help aid learning language models with spatial reasoning.[24]

Niantic Spatial offers its Scaniverse platform across web and mobile devices, which transforms 3D capture of the real world into Gaussian splat reconstructions, meshes, and VPS maps.[25][26] Capture can come from any camera sensor including mobile devices, 360° cameras, drones, satellites, and more. In July 2026, USDZ output was added to Scaniverse, making it easier to use these assets for robotics simulation training.[27]

Niantic Spatial's localization technology focuses on positioning users, AI agents, and AR content in space. Niantic Spatial offers its Visual Positioning System (VPS) for precise positioning, orientation, and tracking for millions of pre-mapped locations and unmapped locations including GPS-denied environments.[28][29]

Niantic Spatial's semantic understanding technology focuses on providing real-time contextual awareness of the world. Niantic Spatial's AI capabilities deliver this through per-pixel semantic analysis to classify environments into categories like ground and sky, and computer vision models that detect and track over 200 types of objects.[30]

In 2026, their reconstruction and visual positioning system was granted awardable status on Tradewinds Marketplace and Army DevX Autonomy Marketplace allowing the government to more easily procure their technology.[31][32]

Niantic Spatial operates 8th Wall, a development platform that enables creators to build and publish interactive WebAR experiences. It provides a complete set of tools, including a cloud-based IDE and computer vision technology, allowing for the creation of immersive 3D and XR content that works across a wide range of devices without requiring an app.[33] In November 2025, it was announced that after seven years of operation, 8th Wall would be shut down. Existing projects on the platform will remain available until the services are closed in early 2027.[34] The majority of the 8th Wall platform was made open source in the first half of 2026.[35]

Video games

[edit]

Ingress, launched in 2012 and reworked into Unity in 2018, transferred to Niantic Spatial during its spin-off. Ingress is a global-scale version of capture the flag where players battle for control of virtual portals at real-world landmarks.[36]

Peridot, another Niantic intellectual property, which includes a collection of products within its franchise, also transferred to Niantic Spatial during its spin-off. It is an AR and AI pet simulation game that launched on mobile devices in 2023.[37] The next products are a mixed-reality experience on Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro called Hello, Dot, and an augmented-reality glasses experience on Snap's Spectacles called Peridot Beyond.[38][39][40]

References

[edit]
  1. ↑ "Welcoming Inhi Cho Suh as CEO of Niantic Spatial". Niantic Spatial. March 23, 2026. Retrieved March 27, 2026.
  2. ↑ "'Pokemon Go' Owner Sells Games to Saudi Group for $3.5 Billion". Bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on August 12, 2025. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  3. ↑ Whitfield, Sam (April 15, 2026). "The Company Behind Pokemon GO Just Launched the Infrastructure Layer for AR". VR.org.
  4. ↑ Astle, Aaron (March 13, 2025). "Niantic Spatial spin-off nets $250m funding after Scopely acquisition". www.pocketgamer.biz. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  5. ↑ Hern, Alex (August 14, 2015). "Niantic Labs departs from Google's Alphabet". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  6. ↑ Alumni, Ellen DaSilva. "Niantic Labs and Pokemon Go: Bringing AR to the Masses". Digital Innovation and Transformation. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  7. ↑ Heath, Alex (November 8, 2021). "Niantic launches platform to build 'real-world metaverse' apps". The Verge. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  8. ↑ "'Pokemon Go' maker Niantic to sell game division to Saudi-owned Scopely for $3.5 billion". Reuters. March 12, 2025. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  9. ↑ "Scopely to acquire Niantic games business, which includes "Pokémon GO," one of the most successful mobile games of all time". www.scopely.com. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  10. ↑ Levine, Adam. "Pokémon Go Is Driving a $4 Billion Spinoff. Those Game Maps Could Be AI Gold". barrons. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  11. ↑ "Geological Society of America - Honors & Awards". www.geosociety.org. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  12. ↑ "Thomas Gewecke – VRTL SUMMIT". www.vrtlsummit.com. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  13. ↑ "Welcoming Inhi Cho Suh as CEO of Niantic Spatial". Niantic Spatial, Inc. Retrieved April 3, 2026.
  14. ↑ Lang, Ben (June 20, 2025). "Snap Inc. & Niantic's New Partnership Could be a Big Moment for City-scale AR Positioning and Experiences". Road to VR. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  15. ↑ bio, See full. "Meow Wolf's Weird Physical Universe Is Planning to Extend Into Augmented Reality". CNET. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  16. ↑ "Niantic Spatial Partners With Aechelon on Coast Guard Training". Auganix.org. September 8, 2025. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  17. ↑ Phillips, Tom (September 23, 2025). "Hideo Kojima Announces AR Project With Pokémon Go Creator Niantic Spatial". IGN. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  18. ↑ Erwin, Sandra (December 16, 2025). "Vantor partners with Niantic Spatial on GPS-free navigation for defense market". SpaceNews.
  19. ↑ page, Will Douglas Heavenarchive. "How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world". MIT Technology Review.
  20. ↑ McNabb, Ian (May 28, 2026). "Niantic Spatial and Spexi Turn Drone Imagery Into Physical AI". DRONELIFE.
  21. ↑ "How ExxonMobil is Piloting Visual Positioning to Transform Field Operations". Niantic Spatial, Inc.
  22. ↑ "Niantic Spatial, Flexion, and NVIDIA: Closing the Sim2Real Gap for Humanoids". flexion.ai.
  23. ↑ Bobby Parikh (September 5, 2025). "Why enterprise AI's next breakthrough lies in spatial intelligence". TechRadar. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  24. ↑ "Niantic ventures into the Geospatial with a purpose". May 30, 2025. Retrieved December 6, 2025.
  25. ↑ Mehta, Ivan (August 26, 2024). "Niantic aims to build a richer 3D map of the world with a new version of Scaniverse app". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  26. ↑ Roettgers, Janko (April 7, 2026). "Inside Niantic Spatial's audacious plan to scan the world". Fast Company. Archived from the original on April 8, 2026.
  27. ↑ Francis, Sam (July 7, 2026). "Niantic Spatial adds USDZ export to Scaniverse to streamline robotics simulation workflows". Robotics & Automation News.
  28. ↑ Heaney, David (August 11, 2025). "Niantic Spatial SDK Brings Outdoor VPS & Long-Distance Live Meshing To Quest 3". UploadVR. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  29. ↑ McNabb, Ian (September 15, 2025). "Aechelon Technology Announces New Whole-Earth Digital Twin "Project Orbion"". DroneLife. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  30. ↑ Hayden, Scott (November 8, 2021). "Niantic Kickstarts Its AR Metaverse with Release of Lightship SDK and $20M Developer Fund". Road to VR. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  31. ↑ "Niantic Spatial's 3D Reconstruction Technology Assessed "Awardable" on the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace". Niantic Spatial, Inc.
  32. ↑ "Niantic Spatial Designated Award-Ready Through the Army Applications Laboratory DevX Autonomy Marketplace". Niantic Spatial, Inc.
  33. ↑ Peters, Jay (March 10, 2022). "Niantic's 'largest acquisition to date' shows the company is still pushing on AR". The Verge. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  34. ↑ "8th Wall to Shut Down After Seven Years of Advancing WebAR". Remix Reality. November 20, 2025.
  35. ↑ Hayden, Scott (March 10, 2026). "Niantic's WebAR Creation Platform '8th Wall' Goes Open Source as Hosted Services Go Offline". Road to VR.
  36. ↑ Roettgers, Janko (October 15, 2015). "Niantic Labs Raises $20 Million to Turn the World Into an Augmented Reality Playground". Variety. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  37. ↑ McWhertor, Michael (March 7, 2023). "Pokémon Go maker's new virtual pet game Peridot launches in May". Polygon. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  38. ↑ Hayden, Scott (May 9, 2025). "Niantic Spatial's Adorable Pet Sim 'Hello, Dot' Leaves Early Access on Quest 3". Road to VR. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  39. ↑ Hamilton, Ian (November 18, 2024). "Niantic's Hello, Dot Arrives On Apple Vision Pro". UploadVR. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  40. ↑ "A computer on your face? Snap and others still trying to make augmented reality glasses a reality". Los Angeles Times. September 17, 2024. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
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