Niantic raises $300M at $9B valuation as it guns for the real-world metaverse
/Pokémon Go maker Niantic has raised $30o million from investor Coatue at a $9 billion valuation as it aims to build the real-world metaverse.
While Facebook/Meta is trying to build the metaverse on a foundation of virtual reality, Niantic has seen its success on location-based gaming with Pokémon Go. And that has made it partial to creating extensions of that game for its version of the metaverse. Techcrunch reported the news.
In other words, San Francisco-based Niantic believes the metaverse can be built with AR images overlaid on the real world. Hanke believes that the VR-based visions of the metaverse, like in Ready Player One, are more like a dystopian nightmare. In a speech at Augmented World Expo, Hanke criticized the dystopias.