Giphy Inc. is purchased by Shutterstock from Meta for $53 million in cash

Shutterstock Inc., a provider of stock imagery, announced on Wednesday that it will acquire Meta Platforms Inc.’s Giphy Inc., a platform for animated photographs. Reuters reported that Shutterstock paid $53 million in cash to acquire Giphy. The settlement was reached months after the owner of Facebook committed to rid the business of any competition-related worries.

Due to concerns that Giphy would restrict or deny competitors like Snapchat Inc. and Twitter access to the target’s material, the UK’s competition authorities requested that Meta sell Giphy last year.

Giphy was supposedly acquired by Meta for $400 million in 2020. The deal was contested a year later by the British Competition and Markets Authority. The US computer giant was compelled to sell a business it had previously acquired by the regulator. In other words, Meta has only made back 13% of its investment.

According to Shutterstock, Giphy will generate “minimal” new money this year and will start making efforts to do so in 2024.

“This is an exciting next step in Shutterstock’s journey as an end-to-end creative platform,” stated Paul Hennessy, CEO of Shutterstock.

Recently, Shutterstock has begun experimenting with artificial intelligence. The business added that the agreement supports the development of its “generative AI and metadata strategy”. It claimed that the agreement would enable it to add GIFs and stickers for companies and advertisers to its content collection.

We are broadening our audience touch points through the Giphy purchase beyond purely professional marketing and advertising use cases and into casual discussions, according to CEO Hennessy.

“Giphy enables marketers to participate in these casual chats while also enabling regular consumers to express themselves in memorable ways using GIF and sticker material. As we roll out this service to customers” we intend to make use of Shutterstock’s distinctive capabilities in content and metadata monetization, generative AI, studio production, and creative automation to enable the commercialization of our GIF library.

Giphy is the biggest collection of animated pictures, or GIFs, and online stickers, which are utilised on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Microsoft Teams.

It receives 15 billion daily impressions for its material, which also includes formal contributions from media companies like Disney and Netflix.

According to Shutterstock, the Giphy arrangement will give customers access to around 1.7 billion daily users.