Getty and Shutterstock $3.7bn image and content library merger nears completion; reinforces “IP is the new oil” message

Stock image libraries Getty Images and Shutterstock have moved closer to finalising a merger that will value the resulting group at around $3.7bn, with approval from Shutterstock shareholders for the deal. Both parties expect the transaction to close in the second half of 2025, subject to regulatory approvals.

Getty Images operates under the Getty Images, iStock and Unsplash brands. It claims to work with over 576,000 content creators and more than 340 content partners, and says it covers more than 160,000 news, sport and entertainment events every year. It constitutes one of the most extensive privately-owned photographic archives in the world with millions of images dating back to the beginning of photography.

Shutterstock claims to be “the leading global platform for licensing from the most extensive and diverse collection of high-quality 3D models, videos, music, photographs, vectors and illustrations” with relationships with millions of creators around the world. It further says it is “the world's largest content marketplace.”

Both companies are having to grapple with the threats and opportunities presented by generative Artificial Intelligence to creative industries, and both have their own AI offerings. Further, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI in 2023 to allow its image libraries to be used by OpenAI to train its AI systems. On the other hand, Getty is currently involved in a court case against London-based AI company Stability AI, over claim the latter has infringed Getty copyrights and trade marks in training its system. That case reached the UK High Court this week.

According to a Guardian news story, “Getty called the people who were training the AI system ‘a bunch of tech geeks’ and claimed they were indifferent to the problems their innovation might create… Stability countered by alleging that Getty was using ‘fanciful’ legal routes and spending approximately £10m to fight a technology it feared was ‘an existential threat’ to its business.”

This seems a good time to brush off an interview from The Economist with the man who founded Getty Images, Mark Getty, from 25 years ago.

Mark Getty is a grandson of J. Paul Getty, who founded the Getty Oil Company in 1947 and who was at one time ranked as the world’s richest man; so he knows something about where company value came from in the 20th century, and where it comes from today, in the 21st century.

When asked why he had decided to launch Getty Images, he said: “Intellectual property… is the oil of the 21st century. Look at the richest men a hundred years ago: they all made their money extracting natural resources or moving them around. All today's richest men have made their money out of intellectual property.”