Shutterstock Acquires Giphy from Meta in $53 Million Deal

Shutterstock has purchased the animated-gif search engine Giphy from Meta in a deal worth $53 million. This comes just three years after Meta bought Giphy for a staggering $400 million.

Shutterstock Giphy

The sale was initiated after the UK’s competition watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), issued an order to Meta to sell Giphy due to competition concerns.

Meta had initially promised that Giphy would be available to other social networks. However, the CMA’s investigation into the acquisition revealed that it would hinder competition. It was the first time the regulator had blocked a deal struck by a big Silicon Valley company.

In September, Meta appealed to the CMA to prevent the sale but eventually agreed to comply with the CMA’s order to divest Giphy in October.

Giphy svg

Giphy provides animated gifs to popular social networks like Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter. As part of the deal, Meta’s platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp will retain access to Giphy’s library.

Meanwhile, Shutterstock expressed enthusiasm about acquiring Giphy. “This is an exciting next step in Shutterstock’s journey as an end-to-end creative platform,” said Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy.

“We help people and brands tell their stories, and through the Giphy acquisition, we’re expanding our reach beyond professional marketing and advertising use cases into casual conversations.”

Giphy’s extensive library of GIFs and stickers receives over 1.3 billion daily search queries and powers more than 15 billion media impressions each day.

The content library is enriched by contributions from individual artists and renowned media partners like NBC, Disney, Netflix, NFL, MLB, and NBA.

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