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The Niantic Story We believe we can use technology to lean into the ‘reality’ of augmented reality — encouraging everyone to get outside and connect with the world around us. It’s our responsibility to consider user privacy, responsible use, inclusive development processes, and AR’s potential impact on the world now, not after the fact.
Our mission

Using technology to serve humanity is at the core of what we do. Through AR, we seek to:
Draw people outdoors We believe humans are the happiest when their virtual world leads to a physical one.
Inspire exploration We nudge people to discover new neighborhoods, parks, and friends.
Encourage exercise We design our technology to help people get moving and stay active.
Create connection We want our products to bring people into contact with their neighbors and communities.
From Google Earth to Pokémon GO, we’ve always been explorers

We’ve worked on products that have touched hundreds of millions of people — including Google Earth, Google Maps, and of course, Pokémon GO. Today we’re building technology that connects the digital and physical worlds. Explore our history to see how we got here.
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Our first 3D map launches In 2001, a small team of geospatially-obsessed computer scientists, gamers, cartographers, and AI researchers created Keyhole. Originally conceived as a video game, Keyhole was a first-of-its-kind product that let users zoom into interactive 3D maps of the planet. Many people from the original Keyhole team still work with us at Niantic today.
From Keyhole to Google Earth Three years later, Keyhole was acquired by Google and renamed Google Earth.
Introducing Google Maps, Street View, and more At Google, some of our team continued its focus on the exploration and 3D modeling of hundreds of cities, countries, and planets. We introduced Google Maps, Street View, SketchUp, and Panoramio, among other products.
Niantic Labs is created The idea: create a new kind of gameplay using mobile devices and our understanding of maps. The goal: make the world more magical through exploration, exercise, and real-world social interaction. The result: Niantic Labs begins as a startup within Google.
Meet our first app: Field Trip In 2012, we released Field Trip, a location-based mobile app that guided users to the unique and hidden sites around them. Field Trip first launched on mobile devices and eventually appeared on wearables and augmented reality hardware.
Ingress changes the game Later we introduced Ingress, a location-based AR mobile game that transformed the real world into a global game of mystery, intrigue, and competition. It was the first of its kind.
Niantic sets out on our own In 2015, we spun out of Alphabet Inc. as an independent private company. With $35 million in Series-A funding from The Pokémon Company Group, Google, and Nintendo, we announced the development of Pokémon GO in collaboration with The Pokémon Company and Nintendo.
Pokémon GO enters the world Pokémon GO became a global phenomenon overnight. To date, it’s the most popular — and profitable — AR app of all time.
Pokémon GO keeps growing By 2017, the app was downloaded over 650 million times, and Trainers collectively covered 15.8 billion kilometers — roughly the distance from Earth past the edge of the solar system.
Connecting to communities In an effort to continue to support the blossoming real-world communities, we create several partnerships with nonprofits around the world. Together, we aim to encourage and support community engagement through AR experiences in local communities.
Our first Pokémon GO live events Drawing on our experience hosting thousands of real-world events for Ingress, we launched some of the first live events for Pokémon GO. Millions of players came together in person in Japan, Korea, the Americas, and Europe.
Ingress returns as Ingress Prime In 2018, we launched Ingress Prime, a reboot of our debut real-world game Ingress. In addition to completely reimagining the user interface and sound design, Ingress Prime integrated state-of-the-art AR tech that made it even more immersive.
Introducing Niantic Wayfarer We rolled out Niantic Wayfarer, a tool that helps people shape future adventures. With Niantic Wayfarer, eligible players can add and review nominations of local points-of-interest (like museums, art installations, and historical markers) so they can be added to Niantic products (like Portals, PokéStops, and Gyms).
Niantic Research presents on 3D mapping At the 2020 European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2020) — the top international conference on the topic — our research team presented three papers and a technical report on 3D mapping. The research addressed questions about a player’s location, the 3D scene in front of them, and how everything fits into the larger 3D map of the digital-yet-real world around them.
Niantic turns 5! We celebrated our fifth birthday with 600 more employees, four more offices, three more games, and hundreds of millions more players than when we started. Here’s to the next five years!
Pikmin Bloom gets growing In 2021, we launched Pikmin Bloom, developed together with Nintendo. The game brings joy to your daily journeys through tiny, plant-like creatures that grow, bloom, and follow you when you move.
Introducing the Lightship Platform We opened up the platform that powers our AR experiences to the world. The first version of Lightship gave developers the tools to understand, map, and share the world around them, so they could focus on creating amazing AR experiences.
Launching Niantic Ventures Alongside the release of Lightship, we announced Niantic Ventures, a $20 million fund that invests in — and partners with — companies building the future of AR.
Bringing players together with Community Days We launched our inaugural Niantic Community Day in March. These real-world events bring players together in person and feature all of our games.
Welcoming 8th Wall We acquired 8th Wall, the WebAR development platform. 8th Wall pioneered web-based augmented reality (WebAR), enabling developers to create AR experiences that work on mobile devices but don’t require an app. The acquisition gave us one of the most complete sets of AR tools to build the real-world metaverse.
Peridot launches globally In May, we launched Peridot, a generative AI pet game where you bond with adorable magical pets and collaborate with other players to diversify their species by hatching a new generation of 100% genetically unique creatures.
Introducing WOL, Niantic’s first mixed reality experience powered by 8th Wall We launched our first mixed reality headset experience to further our mission of connecting people around the world and encouraging exploration. Wol is your loveable owl guide, and provides a natural conversation with you about the redwood forest. WOL has been awarded the Webby Winner for Best Use of Augmented Reality 2024 in AI, Metaverse & Virtual.
Release pioneering research on Virtual Occlusions Through Implicit Depth at CVPR 2023 We challenge the traditional depth-regression approach and propose an implicit model for visibility.
Campfire launches globally to Pokémon GO trainers To improve our social experiences in our games, we launched Campfire – giving our Niantic community a new way to experience the joy of real-world gameplay, starting with Pokémon Go.
We ship ARDK 3.0 with more AR features In October, Niantic released the newest version of our AR developer kit, - making it the most comprehensive set of tools and services available to create new AR applications, or to add AR functionality to existing Unity-based Apps across iOS and Android devices.
Monster Hunter Now launches globally In November, Niantic and Capcom launch “Monster Hunter Now,” bringing Capcom’s globally popular Monster Hunter series to the real world and inspiring a new generation of hunters to get out and hunt with friends.
Expanding the Peridot franchise with a Quest 3 headset experience ‘Hello Dot’ Building on our mixed reality experiences, Niantic launched ‘Hello Dot’ as part of the Peridot franchise. ‘Hello Dot’ pushes boundaries by experimenting with how we can leverage the power of generative AI to drive gameplay in meaningful and whimsical ways.
We ship breakthrough research on Accurate Plane Estimation via 3D-Consistent Embeddings at CVPR 2024 Niantic researchers presented “AirPlanes: Accurate Plane Estimation via 3D-Consistent Embeddings” to identify the flat surfaces in a 3D scene from pictures taken at different angles. This work is key to adding digital content to the real world in augmented reality
Scaniverse introduces support for 3D Gaussian Splatting With the inclusion of Gaussian Splatting as an output option in Scaniverse, Niantic introduced the fastest on-device processing of the volume rendering technique at AWE 2024. This breakthrough allows for fast scans of real-world locations and objects that can be shared directly from phones.
Niantic introduces Niantic Studio, a new, free-to-use visual editor, updates to 3D mapping app Scaniverse and more at AWE 2024 At AWE 2024, Niantic introduced a new visual editor, Niantic Studio, and showcased updates to tools for scanning real-world objects and locations, blending the virtual and real worlds in a more seamless way than ever before.
Come build with us

The real-world metaverse requires as many perspectives as possible. Let’s build it together.