Getty Images and Shutterstock, two of the globe’s biggest commercial photo, video and stock image marketplaces, are planning a $3.7 billion merger as the companies grapple with a marketplace rocked by the emergence of artificial intelligence tools.
Getty, which provides wire service photography and video to news outlets and businesses globally, including most red carpets and film festival premieres, plans a merger with rival Shutterstock that touts a stock image library of 450 million photos.
If the deal closes, the combined company will be led by Craig Peters and called Getty Images Holdings, Inc and keep trading on the New York Stock Exchange as GETY. The company expects to achieve cost synergies of between $150 million and $200 million within three years as it combines operations.
“Today’s announcement is exciting and transformational for our companies, unlocking multiple opportunities to strengthen our financial foundation and invest in the future — including enhancing our content offerings, expanding event coverage, and delivering new technologies to better serve our customers,” stated Peters.
The Getty CEO added, “With the rapid rise in demand for compelling visual content across industries, there has never been a better time for our two businesses to come together. By combining our complementary strengths, we can better address customer opportunities while delivering exceptional value to our partners, contributors, and stockholders.”
The tie up may also be one of necessity in the face of a changing internet. Multiple artificial intelligence companies — from OpenAI to Anthropic — have rolled out text-to-image tools that have allowed users to create custom images in seconds that could be used as stock imagery online, a development that threatens the business model of Getty and Shutterstock in that category.
Both companies, in response to the evolving tech, have introduced their own generative AI tools that allow customers to edit images in their library using similar technology in a commercially safe way. (AI companies are currently being sued by writers and artists over claims that the models are trained on copyrighted material.)
“We are excited by the opportunities we see to expand our creative content library and enhance our product offering to meet diverse customer needs,” said Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy. “We expect the merger to produce value for the customers and stockholders of both companies by capitalizing on attractive growth opportunities to drive combined revenues, accelerating product innovation, realizing significant cost synergies and improving cash flow.”
English (US) ·