Pokémon Go maker Niantic now worth about $4 billion

The Wall Street Journal reports that Niantic is worth just shy of $4 billion now following the $200 million round of venture capital being raised by the Pokémon Go maker.

To give some context, $4 billion is about where Epic Games was earlier this spring. But a round of funding at the end of October took the Fortnite maker to $15 billion. Forbes notes that it had been $660 million in 2012, right around the time Fortnite was first announced (in a completely different form from what it is today).

Neither Niantic nor Epic are publicly held companies. Among those players, Take-Two Interactive (parent company of 2K Games and Rockstar) is at $11.7 billion in market capitalization, Electronic Arts is at $24.2 billion and Activision Blizzard is $36.4 billion.

Last year, Niantic raised $200 million, for a valuation of around $2.7 billion. So this shows investors still have a high opinion of the company even after the Pokemon Go craze cooled off. Pokémon Go is still among one of the top 200 apps (by downloads) in the U.S., but not dominating the chart as it did two years ago.

When Pokémon Go launched, the craze spiked Nintendo’s stock price by so much the company had to remind investors that, though it owns about a third of The Pokémon Company, which licensed Pokémon Go, it neither produced the game nor did it really see a big financial gain from it. Investors responded by dropping its stock price the most in a single day since 1990.

Pokémon Go recently introduced PvP multiplayer in the form of trainer battles, where players can take on each other one-on-one and in competitive leagues as well. Niantic is also working with Warner Bros. on the recently announced Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, another mobile augmented reality game set in that franchise’s wizarding world. That’s expected to launch in 2019.