Niantic, the maker of the popular Pokemon Go augmented reality app, has acquired a Boston software startup that focused on persistent, multiplayer AR experiences.
VentureBeat reported on Thursday that Niantic scooped up Escher Reality, a startup formerly known as AR Spirit that started as an idea at the MIT Sandbox student innovation program and went through local programs like MassChallenge and Autodesk Build.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Led by Ross Finman and Diana Hu, Escher had raised $3 million from investors, including iRobot Ventures, Y Combinator and Founders Fund. The company has six employees.
“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,” Niantic CEO John Hanke said in a statement, according to VentureBeat. “It’s our intention to make our cross-platform AR technology available more widely to developers later this year. Stay tuned for information on developer availability.”
A year after its launch in 2016, Pokemon Go had 65 million monthly active users as of last July. Niantic is now working on an AR game set in the Harry Potter universe.
