The company became an independent entity in October 2015 when Google restructured under Alphabet Inc.[3] Niantic has additional offices in Bellevue, Los Angeles, Sunnyvale, Seattle, Lawrence, Tokyo, London, Hamburg, and Zürich.

[4] John Hanke worked at Keyhole in 2001, a software development company specializing in geospatial data visualization applications.

[10] In February 2016, Niantic announced that it had secured an additional $5 million[11] in Series A funding including investment[12] from venture capital firms Alsop Louie Partners and You & Mr. Jones Brandtech Ventures, as well as angel investors Lucas Nealan, Cyan Banister, and Scott Banister.

[13] While adding more support for the growth of the company, this investment enabled Niantic to bring in strategic industry pioneers including the addition of Gilman Louie to its board.

[17] In November 2017, it was announced that Niantic had acquired Evertoon, an app which allows users to make short, personalized films.

Hanke stated that Niantic planned to allow third-party developers to build AR games similar to Pokémon Go.

The Matrix Mill team has spent years focusing on perfecting augmented reality occlusion by building deep neural networks that can infer 3D information about the surrounding world.

[30] In 2021, Niantic acquired Scaniverse, a 3D scanning app, and Lowkey, a social gaming platform in which users can record and share gameplay moments.

[36] The core platform consists of a suite of tools including: AR Cloud, anti-cheat security, POI data, IAP, social, analytics, CRM, sponsorship, and more.

[40] In November 2021, Niantic launched the Lightship software development kit for augmented reality based on Unity.

Initially, Niantic had taken an alternative approach to monetization, veering away from more traditional mobile application development standards such as ad placements and in-app purchases.

[45] In collaboration with Craftar Studio, Ingress: The Animation, a television series based on the popular augmented reality game was produced.

[46] Tatsuo Nomura, who joined Niantic in 2015 after he developed the Google Maps: Pokémon Challenge,[47] acted as Director and Product Manager for the game.

[55] Exactly two months after its launch, at Apple's September keynote, John Hanke announced that Pokémon Go exceeded 500 million downloads worldwide and that players around the world had walked over 4.6 billion kilometers.

[58] During Pokémon Go's Adventure Week in-game promo in May 2017, Niantic announced that players had collectively walked over 15.8 billion kilometers, roughly the distance from Earth past the edge of the solar system.

To date, Pokémon Go has established several partnerships around the globe among which include Verizon[61] and Starbucks[62] in the United States, Reliance Jio[63] in India, SoftBank, 7-Eleven in Japan, and McDonald's in Canada.

The project is an AR-based adventure in the real world that has the meaning of making walking fun with the little creatures named Pikmin.

[72] The app is intended to allow players to find community groups, which had previously been based on third-party platforms such as Reddit and Discord.

[73] In 2012, Niantic launched its first product, Field Trip, a location-based mobile app that acted as "your guide to the cool, hidden, and unique things in the world around you.

[78][79] The mobile AR game, inspired by J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World and Harry Potter, is said to allow players to "explore real-world neighborhoods and cities to discover mysterious artifacts, learn to cast spells, and encounter legendary beasts and iconic characters along the way".

[85] On June 29, 2023, Niantic announced that the game will be sunsetting as part of the company's layoff of 230 employees from their Los Angeles office.

[86] Niantic has been sued in at least two class-action lawsuits: one starting in 2016 due to complaints from homeowners regarding trespassing and nuisance caused by Pokémon Go players,[100] and a $1.58 million settlement following gameplay issues during a real-life event in Chicago.

This resulted in Niantic forcing the developers to terminate their illegitimate distributions of the hacked apps and reverse engineering the games' codes.

[citation needed] In August 2021, Niantic faced criticism from the playerbase due to reverting safety measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which gym and PokéStop interaction distances were increased from 40 to 80 meters (130 to 260 ft).

[112][113] One employee accused the company of being paid $10,000 less than her job's posted pay range, and between 2021 and 2023, she had learned that a less experienced male colleague had a higher salary than her.

[114] Wolfpack, a human resources for women, found in a survey that many female employees viewed Niantic as "sexist"[115] and referred to them as a "boys' club".