Niantic acquires AR outfit Escher Reality

Pokémon Go developer Niantic has announced that it’s acquired augmented reality development outfit Escher Reality.

Announced the deal, Niantic’s CEO John Henke said: "Escher’s innovations focus on exploring the intersection of digital and physical worlds, augmented reality (AR), and computer vision, 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 part of the deal, although the rest of the terms were not disclosed. Finman and Hu co-founded the company two years ago. Escher Reality’s investors include Uncork Capital, Founders Fund, Y Combinator, Liquid 2 Ventures, Webb Investment Network, iRobot Ventures, Presence Capital, Into Ventures, in addition to several angel investors.

The pair released their own statement, saying: "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."

Niantic recently acquired social mechanics start-up Evertoon.