Niantic acquires AR dev Escher Reality
Pokemon Go studio adds start-up working on mapping and computer vision tech
Niantic has acquired another augmented reality outfit, as the Pokemon Go developer today announced that it has added Escher Reality to its ranks.
"Escher's innovations focus on exploring the intersection of digital and physical worlds, augmented reality (AR), and computer vision," Niantic CEO John Henke said in announcing the deal. "Escher's technology helps to build persistent, cross platform, multi-user experiences.
"The addition of the Escher AR technology is incredibly exciting to us at Niantic as it significantly accelerates our work on persistent, shared AR as part of the Niantic real-world application platform. It's our intention to make our cross-platform AR technology available more widely to developers later this year."
Escher Reality's CEO Ross Finman and CTO Diana Hu will be joining Niantic as well. The pair co-founded the company two years ago and brought it up through the MIT Sandbox program for student entrepreneurs.
"We're really looking forward to integrating our work on mapping and computer vision technology into Niantic's amazing content and AR platform," the pair said in a statement. "The long-term vision is to help to bring shared and persistent AR experiences to millions of people around the world, and further realize AR's impact going forward."
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.