Niantic has revealed that it has raised roughly £225million ($300million USD) from Coatue, which has raised the company value to roughly £6.73billion ($9billion USD).
The Pokemon Go developer has previously come out against the idea of the metaverse, with founder and CEO John Hanke saying it was a “dystopian nightmare” in August.
“At Niantic, we believe humans are the happiest when their virtual world leads them to a physical one,” Hanke said in the recent post. “Unlike a sci-fi metaverse, a real-world metaverse will use technology to improve our experience of the world as we’ve known it for thousands of years.”
“Niantic is building a platform for AR based on a 3D map of the world that we believe will play a critical role in the next transition in computing,” said Matt Mazzeo, a general partner at Coatue. “We are excited to partner with Niantic because we see this infrastructure supporting a metaverse for the real world and helping to power the next evolution of the internet.” he continued.
Earlier in November Niantic announced that Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is to close down on January 31, 2022.
The game, which is a take on the wildly successful formula, set in the wizarding world of , was released in June of 2019. A on its website from “The Team”, reads:
