'Pokemon Go' unit sold to Saudi Group for $3.5 billion

Saudi sovereign wealth fund-backed Scopely has agreed to buy Niantic's gaming business, including the mobile hit Pokemon Go, for $3.5 billion. Scopely, which is owned by a unit of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, will also acquire Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now from Niantic, along with the teams working on them, the Saudi company said in a statement on Wednesday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report.

Niantic's games encourage players to go outside and explore their neighbourhoods to receive in-game rewards. The Niantic games business generated more than $1 billion in revenue from 30 million monthly active users last year, Scopely said. Beyond the runaway success of Pokemon Go, many of Niantic's other games have struggled to gain traction or have shut down entirely.

Scopely will not acquire Niantic's mapping technology business, which the company's chief executive officer John Hanke will helm under the new name, Niantic Spatial. Using players' data, the company said in a press release, it will build mapping technology that "captures the content of the world at a level of fidelity never before achieved" with applications in manufacturing, education, warehousing, logistics, tourism and more.


Niantic Spatial is funded with $200 million from Niantic and $50 million from Scopely. Niantic's augmented-reality games, including Ingress Prime and Peridot, will stay with Niantic Spatial. Niantic was spun out of Alphabet Inc.'s Google in 2015. Hanke worked in satellite mapping before leading Google's Geo product division.

Savvy Games Group, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's PIF, bought mobile gamemaker Scopely for $4.9 billion two years ago.