Meta Sells Giphy to Shutterstock in $53M Deal

Stock media provider Shutterstock is set to acquire the Giphy from Meta in a deal worth $53 million.

The deal followed the UK’s Competitions and Markets Authority ruling that Meta breached competition law and must divest the platform.

“This is an exciting next step in Shutterstock’s journey as an end-to-end creative platform,” said Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy. “Shutterstock is in the business of helping people and brands tell their stories. Through the Giphy acquisition, we are extending our audience touch points beyond primarily professional marketing and advertising use cases and expanding into casual conversations.”

Meta announced in 2020 that it had reached a deal worth around $315 million to acquire Giphy, a GIF library and search engine. That deal immediately came under scrutiny over claims of being anti-competitive to the U.K. market.

The finding, upheld by The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), ruled that the takeover could limit other social media platforms from accessing GIFs, which might limit their appeal to users.

Giphy claims to have 1.7 billion daily users working alongside platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp, Microsoft, TikTok, Samsung, Twitter, Slack and Discord.

Meta lost the tribunal on the ruling last October, forcing it to find a new buyer for the platform.

“We will work closely with the CMA on divesting Giphy” a Meta spokesperson said in October, upon the ruling. “We are grateful to the Giphy team during this uncertain time for their business, and wish them every success.”

“Giphy enables everyday users to express themselves in memorable ways with GIF and sticker content while also enabling brands to be a part of these casual conversations,” added Hennessy. “We plan to leverage Shutterstock’s unique capabilities in content and metadata monetization, generative AI, studio production and creative automation to enable the commercialization of our GIF library as we roll this offering out to customers.”