Getty announces plans to merge with Shutterstock in $3.7B deal

Visual media giants Getty Images Holdings Inc. and Shutterstock Inc. announced today deal to merge into a single visual content company valued at approximately $3.7 billion.

The combined company will retain the Getty Images name and offer a content library that combines the portfolios of both firms. including images, videos, music, 3D and other media. The new company will continue to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “GETY.”

“With demand for compelling visual content rapidly growing across all industries, now is the right time to combine our two businesses,” said Getty CEO Craig Peters. “By combining our complementary strengths, we can better leverage customer capabilities.”

Both Getty Images and Shutterstock cover similar digital content portfolios, licensing diverse collections of high-quality media. Getty Images maintains one of the world’s largest and finest private photographic archives, containing millions of images dating back to the early days of photography. Shutterstock also maintains a huge global platform for millions of digital content creators to sell their work.

Shares of Getty Images rose 42% in premarket trading this morning after the companies announced the agreement.

In the details of the transaction, which was unanimously approved According to the boards of directors of both companies, Getty Images shareholders will own 54.7% of the combined company after closing, and Shutterstock shareholders will own 45.3%.

Peters will become CEO of the combined company. The new company will also have an eleven-member board of directors, including Peters, Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy, six directors appointed by Shutterstock, and four directors appointed by Getty Images.

Merger of two companies was taken the looming development of generative artificial intelligence, which relies heavily on vast amounts of fresh human-generated data. Getty Images and Shutterstock have dived into AI-powered generative art and installed AI capabilities on their platforms.

Shutterstock has partnered with OpenAI in 2021 and integrated image generator DALL-E AI one year later. Getty Images added AI tool on its iStock website to create commercially safe AI-generated images in October.

The artificial intelligence generator market has been estimated at $8.7 billion. 2024 According to the analytical company MarketsAndMarkets And projected to reach $60.8 billion by 2030. With key AI companies building and training models on large image and video datasets to create image, video and 3D generators and services, the market is growing rapidly to serve growing number creative professionals including marketing, training, consulting and much more.

Photo: Pixabay