Niantic Spatial used scans collected by Pokémon Go players to train an AI model that now underpins GPS-denied navigation for military drones.
In 2020, Pokémon Go introduced AR Mapping tasks that invited players to scan real-world PokéStop locations with their phones, eventually generating nearly 30 billion scans. When Savvy Games' Scopely division bought Niantic's gaming business for $3.5 billion in 2025, the geospatial unit was spun out as Niantic Spatial, which used pre-acquisition scans as training inputs for what it calls a Large Geospatial Model. In December 2025, Niantic Spatial partnered with Vantor, which makes positioning software for military drones operating in GPS-jammed environments; Niantic Spatial says it contributed model training rather than raw scan data, and Vantor relies on its own satellite-derived 3D imagery for actual drone navigation.
The distinction matters legally but muddies the moral picture. Players who opted in to AR mapping agreed to a royalty-free, sublicenseable, perpetual license in Pokémon Go's terms of service, giving Niantic broad rights over those scans. The corporate split between Scopely, which owns post-acquisition scan data, and Niantic Spatial, which retained pre-acquisition rights, illustrates how M&A can scatter accountability across entities while preserving the underlying data utility.
GPS-denied navigation is an active technical priority for militaries worldwide. Whether players scanning a PokéStop in 2021 consented in any meaningful sense to that downstream use is a different question than whether they had the legal right to object.