Software company Niantic, most famous for creating Pokémon Go, is not content with just being a unicorn or a billion dollar company. It looks like they’re shooting for being a 4 billion dollar company. They are reportedly set to raise $200 million in their latest round of funding and one of their investors is supposedly Samsung, which we’ve previously reported on. Now The Wall Street Journal is reporting that this is almost a done deal and will bring the company’s value to $3.9 billion.
Previously, we told you about Samsung’s plans to invest in Niantic and part of this deal will be Galaxy-exclusive games. It looks like this is coming to fruition although we have no idea how much of the $200 million will be coming from the Korean OEM. The capital interjection is supposedly led by venture capital firm IVLP but there are participating investors like Samsung and also aXiomatic gaming.
One of the reasons why investors are giving Niantic money is that Pokémon Go is still continuing to be a huge hit for the company, even though the initial craze has somehow settled down. The highly-anticipated Harry Potter: Wizards Unite augmented reality game is also a huge reason as you can be sure that the whole fandom will play the game like crazy, at least for the first few months (and hopefully beyond that).
Samsung is reportedly investing because of Galaxy-exlusive games and the money could be as huge as $40 million. There’s also a report of a Harry Potter game using the Galaxy Note 9’s S Pen, but as to whether this is just a Note-exclusive version or a different game altogether, sources are still not sure.
Either way, if the investment pushes through, 2019 will be a huge year for Niantic. And if the Samsung deal also materializes, then the gaming push of the brand will expand even more. This includes the Note 9 exclusive stuff for Fortnite and probably even more Niantic-developed games.
VIA: Wall Street Journal
