Pokemon Go maker sells the games section to the Saudi company for $ 3.5 billion

Niantic Labs sells its video games department to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for 3.5 billion US dollars, where the transformations of the American Revolutionary Reality Company to spatial geographical technology after its failure to re -succeed in Smash for the year 2016 Pokemon goes.

This deal, which was announced on Wednesday, also provides the aspirations of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to become the “final global center” of games.

He bought the sovereign wealth fund for the Kingdom, through Savvy games, Scopely for $ 4.9 billion in 2023 as part of a wider batch by the country to diversify beyond fossil fuel.

Niantecand The American software development company was based in San Francisco, one of which was part of Google, but it became independent in 2015.

The company said that it will distribute an additional amount of $ 350 million to the shareholders under the deal.

It will also revolve around spatial geographical intelligence work to a new company called Niantic Spatial, which will be led by the founder of Niantic and CEO John Hanke, who was once a major pioneer for the Google department responsible for Google, Google Earth and Google Street View.

The spatial, or geographical geographic AI only combines geological and traditional analysis with artificial intelligence, to reach faster and deeper data analysis.

Niantic Spatial will be funded for $ 250 million of capital – $ 200 million in the Niantic public budget and $ 50 million from Scopely. All NIANTIC’s original investors will continue to be contributing to Niantic Spatial.

This step follows several difficult years for Niantic.

after Pokemon goes It became one of the most successful mobile phone games, struggling with the company to repeat its success and was forced to lay off the employees in 2022 and 2023. Harry Potter: The processors are autism Mobile phone game in 2022.

For the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is already an increased center for games and the World Cup for the Electronic World Cup, the deal depends on a plan to invest approximately 38 billion US dollars in the initiatives related to the industry through the smart games group.

Savvy Games is a major investor in international video game companies, including Nintendo, with a share of about 7.54 percent after a small reduction last year.