Niantic just revealed that Pokémon Go players helped build a massive dataset of over 30 billion real-world images through everyday gameplay. The company is now using those scans to power visual navigation for delivery bots, letting them pinpoint locations without GPS. Millions of casual monster hunters essentially mapped the physical world for commercial AI.
Niantic just announced a massive restructuring, selling its gaming division—including Pokémon GO and Pikmin Bloom—to mobile giant Scopely in a deal valued at around $3.85 billion. The company is parting ways with game operations to focus entirely on spatial computing and AI through Niantic Spatial.
Niantic just announced it is building a Large Geospatial Model trained on millions of real-world 3D scans uploaded by Pokémon Go and Ingress players. The goal is to give robots and computers human-like spatial intelligence, using pedestrian-level maps of places cars cannot reach.
