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People play Pokémon Go during the Pikachu Outbreak event hosted by The Pokémon Company on August 9, 2017 in Japan.
- Niantic, the company behind hit mobile game "Pokémon Go," has raised roughly $200 million.
- Niantic's next game will be an augmented reality game based on "Harry Potter."
The creator of hit game "Pokémon Go," Niantic, has raised $200 million in funding as it prepares to release another augmented reality game based on the world of "Harry Potter."
The new round of financing was led by Spark Capital and first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Friday. Spark partner Megan Quinn will join Niantic's board as part of the deal. Quinn and Niantic CEO John Hanke worked together at Google before Hanke spun out Niantic from the search giant and turned it into a standalone company in late 2015.
"We believe @johnhanke & the team are building an incredibly important company at the intersection of AR and real world location," Quinn wrote in a tweet on Friday.
Executives from companies like Apple and Facebook have credited "Pokémon Go" for being the first mainstream game to popularize augmented reality, the nascent technology that many in the tech industry believe will one day replace phones by overlaying virtual objects onto the real world.
Niantic has raised roughly $33 million in funding to date. The game-maker struck gold when "Pokémon Go" became the fastest mobile game to reach $1 billion in revenue earlier this year. The company recently announced that its next game would be based on "Harry Potter" and include similar augmented reality elements as "Pokémon Go."