Getty Images going private, following collapse of ShutterStock deal and rise of AI

Getty Images has said it plans to go through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process as a step to being taken private by members of the Getty family and Koch Inc’s investment arm, who will together invest up to $533M in the business.

“Under the Plan, vendors will be unaffected and paid in full in the ordinary course of business,” the company said: “There is no anticipated impact on content contributors, partners, customers, or employees across the Company’s worldwide network.”

The stock image library had given up on its attempts to buy rival ShutterStock after the UK competition body forced revisions to the deal. The heavily indebted company has now been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and its two largest shareholders say they’ve developed a plan to take the company private.

Although the company said it expects a reduction in revenue from its iStock division, “due to reduced eCommerce
demand,” it said it still expects to see growth in its editorial business that provides images to news outlets.

This plan, if approved by the remaining creditors, will be implemented via a “prepackaged” Chapter 11 bankruptcy: a mechanism by which a company can be significantly reorganized, overseen by a bankruptcy court but under the control of the existing owners, in order to remain as a going concern. Some existing lenders have agreed to write-down and restructure some of the company’s debts as part of the process, and the company confirmed “the requisite majority of creditors have committed to vote in favor of the plan.”

It says the restructuring process should be complete by the end of the year.

News agency (and competitor) Reuters reports that competition from AI-generated imagery and heavy debt have played a role in the move. It highlighted that the company’s total debt was around $2.1B at the end of June, whereas its market valuation had slipped to just under $21M when markets closed last Friday. The company’s revenue estimate for 2026 is $920M.

In an accompanying financial update, Getty Images said it had spent around $105M on the failed ShutterStock acquisition, along with $17M in ongoing costs relating to its copyright infringement cases against Stability AI, which it accuses of using its images to train an image generation model.