Niantic, the corporate behind the broadly standard Pokémon GO cellular sport, has managed to safe the endorsement of a serious investor in a contemporary funding spherical because it continues to airbrush its personal model of a “real-world” metaverse primarily based on Augmented Actuality (AR).
To wit, Niantic has now raised $300 million from the investor Coatue in a brand new funding spherical that values the corporate at $9 billion. Keep in mind that the sport developer has raised $770 million in whole funding up to now, as per the tabulation by Crunchbase. Which means that the most recent funding spherical accounts for 38 % of the full funds raised on a cumulative foundation. Furthermore, Niantic’s newest valuation is predicated on a a number of of 9.72x its 2020 income.
After all, the magnitude of this funding spherical is a testomony to the rising urge for food amongst buyers for firms which can be exploring the metaverse development. For the uninitiated, the metaverse is billed as the following logical evolutionary step for the web that may enable seamless interactions by way of a 3D-enabled digital interface and environments. Meta – the corporate behind Fb and different standard social media platforms – gave a large impetus to this development when it unveiled sweeping plans for its personal metaverse just a few weeks again.
Apparently, Niantic has been fairly vocal about its opposition to the metaverse imaginative and prescient being championed by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg. In truth, the corporate went as far as to publish a devoted weblog publish on the topic titled, “The Metaverse is a Dystopian Nightmare. Let’s Build a Better Reality.”
Niantic’s arguments towards the metaverse are fairly nuanced. The corporate is towards a scenario the place individuals abandon the real-world en masse as a way to work together with one another in remoted Digital Actuality (VR) environments. As an alternative, the corporate goals to counterpoint the true world with AR components as a way to add worth and enliven interactions. After all, the corporate’s personal expertise through the COVID-19 pandemic might need performed a task in shaping this discourse.
Niantic’s Lightship platform lies on the coronary heart of this concerted push. The platform already powers most of the firm’s AR-based merchandise, together with Pokémon GO. The corporate has additionally now unveiled the Lightship AR Developer Kit (ARDK) to encourage the event of newer video games and software program options with extra enhanced experiences.
Supply: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1255744/niantic-annual-app-revenue/
Niantic earned a income of $926 million in 2020. As of September 2023, the corporate’s whole income for the yr had amounted to $556 million. Furthermore, by July 2023, Pokémon GO had earned a cumulative income in extra of $5 billion, as per a tabulation by Sensor Tower.
