Stock photography company Shutterstock has bought Giphy from Meta for a $53 million cash deal. The deal came months after UK’s competition regulator asked Meta to sell Giphy. Shutterstock is expected to close the deal next month. Meta also signed a commercial agreement to keep getting access to Giphy’s content across its product suite.
Meta reportedly acquired Giphy back in 2020 for $400. But, the deal was later challenged by Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority. CMA originally ordered Meta to sell Giphy in 2021 but Meta appealed against it. Later Meta decided to stop any further appeals and agreed to sell Giphy.
Shutterstock says that the acquisition of Giphy won’t increase its revenue this year, but the company will look at ways to increase the revenue of Giphy next year.
Giphy is a social GIF platform that lets users discover, share, and save GIFs. The platform was launched in 2013 and raised over $150 million before Meta decided to acquire it. Giphy also offers an API for developers to integrate Giphy’s GIFs into their own applications.
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GIPHY’s library of GIFs and stickers gets more than 1.3 billion searches a month and powered more than 15 billion daily media impressions. Several social messaging apps such as TikTok, Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, Snapchat, Slack, and Microsoft Teams have already integrated GIPHY.
