Ross Finman (right) of Niantic speaks with Blair Herter of
Ross Finman (right) of Niantic speaks with Blair Herter of ADVNCR.
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Niantic’s view of the future of augmented reality

Ross Finman grew up on a llama farm. He studied robotics, started an augmented reality firm called Escher Reality, and sold it to Pokémon Go creator Niantic last year.

That’s how he came to be head of AR at the biggest company in augmented reality today and how he came to speak at our GamesBeat Summit 2019 event in a fireside chat in April with TV and gaming personality Blair Herter. The embedded video is interesting to watch ahead of next week’s Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, California.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.