Niantic

In March 2025, Niantic sold its mobile games division to Scopely for $3.5 billion. The Pokémon GO development team transferred to Scopely with leaders Kei Kawai and Ed Wu staying on. Wu described the deal as "a positive step." However, Niantic Spatial Inc., the geospatial AI spin-off founded May 2025, immediately announced 68 layoffs. Scopely committed to allowing development teams to work independently and assured players the game would remain supported with 100+ million still engaged.

Niantic built AI models for five years using Visual Positioning System data, with 10 million locations scanned globally and 1 million fresh scans weekly. Its Large Geospatial Model was trained on 30 billion images from urban environments. Critics raised concerns about using Pokémon GO player recordings to train AI. Niantic's July 2024 privacy policy confirms using player recordings to "build a 3D understanding of real-world places." The company clarified scanning is opt-in and "merely walking around playing our games does not train an AI model."

Niantic laid off 230 employees (about 25% of workforce) in June 2023 and shut down its LA studio. CEO John Hanke's memo admitted "we have allowed our expenses to grow faster than revenue" after COVID boom faded. The company cancelled NBA All-World and Marvel: World of Heroes games. In August 2023, 100+ more workers were cut. In April 2025, after selling Pokémon GO to Scopely for $3.5 billion, the new Niantic Spatial spin-off laid off 68 more employees. Hanke said the business would reshape into "a startup organisation."