Getty Images Holdings, Inc. (stylized as gettyimages) is an American visual media company and supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video, and music for businesses and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets—creative professionals (advertising and graphic design), the media (print and online publishing), and corporate (in-house design, marketing and communication departments).
Getty Images has distribution offices around the world and capitalizes on the Internet for distribution with over 2.3 billion searches annually on its sites. As Getty Images has acquired other older photo agencies and archives, it has digitized their collections, enabling online distribution. Getty Images operates a large commercial website that clients use to search and browse for images, purchase usage rights, and download images. Image prices vary according to resolution and type of rights. The company also offers custom photo services for corporate clients. In January 2025, it was announced that the company would be merging with Shutterstock. However, the merger was subsequently terminated in July 2026, after market regulators in the UK required Shutterstock to divest its entire editorial business, a condition Getty's board decided not to proceed with.
History In 1995, Mark Getty and chief executive officer Jonathan Klein co-founded Getty Investments LLC in London. Mark Getty is the company's chairman.
In September 1997, Getty Communications, as it was called at the time, merged with PhotoDisc, Inc. to form Getty Images. The company relocated to Seattle two years later and expanded in the United States, reaching 2,000 employees by 2006. In April 2003, Getty Images entered into a partnership with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to market each other's images.
Getty Images acquired the Michael Ochs Archives in February 2007. The Michael Ochs Archives were described by The New York Times as "the premier source of musician photography in the world".
In 2008, the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman (H&F) acquired Getty Images for $2.4 billion. In 2012, H&F put Getty up for sale. As of the ensuing sale to Carlyle Group, the company was said to have an archive that included 80 million stills and illustrations."Carlyle in $3.3 Billion Deal for Getty Images" , New York Times Dealbook, 15 August 2012. Retrieved 15 August 2012. The company was acquired by the Getty family in 2018.
The company moved to its current headquarters, in the Union Station office complex in Seattle's International District, in 2011.
In 2015, Jonathan Klein became the company's chairman, and Dawn Airey was hired as chief executive officer (CEO) of Getty Images. Airey remained in the role until 31 December 2018, at which time she became a non-executive director member of its board and Craig Peters was appointed CEO.
In 2019, Getty Images introduced Market Freeze, simplifying the exclusivity of rights-managed images. Later that year, it announced that due to customers' changing needs, it plans to phase out rights-managed imagery by 2020 in favor of royalty-free images.
In December 2021, Getty Images announced its intention to become publicly traded once more through a combination with CC Neuberger Principal Holdings II. In July 2022, the SPAC merger was completed, and the newly formed parent company of Getty Images went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol GETY.
The company's share price peaked in August 2022 at over $30, falling to less than $5 by October 2022. Activist investor Trillium Capital made an unsolicited bid to acquire Getty for billion in April 2023representing nearly a 100 percent premium. Getty turned down the offer, questioning its credibility.
In September 2023, Getty announced that it was partnering with Nvidia to launch Generative AI by Getty Images, a new tool that lets people create images using Getty's library of licensed photos. Getty will use Nvidia's Edify model, which is available on Nvidia's generative AI model library, Picasso. Their stock footage is used in Baby Einstein and Little Einsteins.
In January 2025, it was announced that the company would be merging with Shutterstock. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority launched an investigation into the proposed merger in August 2025.
In February 2026, the United States Department of Justice concluded its review and granted unconditional antitrust clearance for the merger under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. Getty Images reported record full-year 2025 revenue of $981.3 million, the highest in the company's 30-year history.
In March 2026, the company issued a 'going concern' warning, stating that it is high in debt driven by costly measures such as merging with Shutterstock and several legal disputes, as well as company irrelevance driven by the steep rise of artificial intelligence.
In July 2026, Getty Images moved to terminate its planned $3.7 billion merger with Shutterstock after the UK Competition and Markets Authority required Shutterstock to divest its global editorial business as a condition for approval. Getty’s board voted unanimously not to proceed with the divestiture process, effectively ending the deal unless circumstances changed before July 7, 2026.
Acquisitions
Since its formation, Getty Images has pursued an aggressive programme of acquisition, buying up many privately owned agencies that had built up the stock photography industry, from small family-run firms to larger agencies. After getting it start by acquiring Tony Stone Images, in March of 1995, which formed its foundation, by 1999 it had acquired the online art seller Art.com; the sports photography agency Allsport; and the market leader in the Benelux and Scandinavia: World View (1996, from Bert Blokhuis, four offices, for an undisclosed sum); journalistic specialists Liaison Agency; Newsmakers, the first digital news photo agency; Online USA, a specialist in celebrity shots; and the Hulton Press Library, the former archive of the British photojournalistic magazine Picture Post. The Hulton collection was sold by the BBC to Brian Deutsch in 1988, when it was renamed Hulton Deutsch. Getty Images purchased the Hulton collection in 1996 and renamed it Hulton Getty. With the acquisition of the Hulton Library, Getty Images took ownership of the rights to some 15 million photographs from British press archives dating back to the nineteenth century. Hulton Getty also included photographs from the Keystone Collection, as well as images by notable photographers such as Bert Hardy, Bill Brandt, Weegee, and Ernst Haas. (archived on the Web Archive)
Getty has branched out into stock audio, music and sound effects, and also video with the acquisition of EyeWire and Energy Film Library. Getty has partnered with other companies, including Slidely, for companies and advertisers to use the Getty Images video library of around 2 million videos.
In 2000, Getty acquired one of its main competitors, Archive Photos of New York (a division of The Image Bank), for US$183 million. The Archive Photos library was combined with the Hulton Getty collection to form a new subsidiary, Hulton Archive. Archive Photos was formed in 1990 from the merger of Pictorial Parade (est. 1935) and Frederick Lewis Stock Photos (est. 1938), two well-established US photo agencies. Their collections included archive images from The New York Times, Metronome, and George Eastman House, and works by photographers such as Ruth Orkin, Anacleto Rapping, Deborah Feingold, Murray Garrett, Nat Fein and John Filo.
Further acquisitions followed, with the purchase in 2004 of Image.net for US$20 million. On 9 February 2006, the microstock photo website iStockphoto was acquired by Getty Images for US$50 million. In 2007, Getty successfully purchased its largest competitor, MediaVast, for $207 million. The acquisition gave Getty Images control of WireImage (entertainment, creative, and sports photography), FilmMagic (fashion and red carpet photography), and Contour Photos (portrait and studio photography). Getty Images also acquired other subsidiaries, including Master Delegates, which includes Isifa Image Service in Prague and Laura Ronchi in Italy. In 2008, Getty purchased Redferns Music Picture Library, the music photo library built up by British jazz photographer David Redfern.
On 23 October 2008, Getty Images announced their intention to buy Jupitermedia's online images division, Jupiterimages, for $96 million in cash. The sale went ahead in February 2009; Jupiterimages (including the sites stock.xchng and StockXpert) is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Getty. Jupitermedia, now trading as WebMediaBrands, continues its Internet publishing business, which they didn't sell to Getty Images.
On 25 January 2016, Corbis announced that it had sold its image licensing business, including the Corbis Images, Corbis Motion, and Veer libraries and their associated assets, to Unity Glory, an affiliate of Visual China Group—Getty's exclusive distributor in China. Concurrently, it was announced that VCG would, after a transition period, license, distribute, and market the Corbis library outside of China to Getty. Getty now manages Corbis's physical archives on behalf of VCG and Unity Glory.
In March 2021, Getty Images acquired Unsplash, a free-to-use stock photography website, for an undisclosed sum.
Corporate ownership and management In February 2008, it was announced that Getty Images would be acquired by the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in a transaction valued at an estimated US$2.4 billion. On 2 July 2008, Getty Images announced the completion of its acquisition. Getty Images common stock ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange at the close of the acquisition and was delisted from the NYSE.
In 2012, H&F engaged investment bankers to sell the company. While a price of $4 billion was initially discussed, in August, when the private equity firm Carlyle Group emerged as the likely acquirer, the price under consideration was said to be $3.3–3.4 billion. CVC Capital Partners Ltd. was also said to have been bidding but had yet to top Carlyle's price.Alesci, Cristina, and Jeffrey McCracken, "Carlyle Group Said to Be Leading Bidder for Getty Images" , Bloomberg, 14 August 2012. Retrieved 14 August 2012. The sale to Carlyle thereafter was announced at $3.3 billion, with co-founders Getty and Klein and the Getty family all carrying their investments over into the new ownership structure. Getty continues to serve as chairman and Klein as chief executive.
In September 2018, the Getty family announced it would acquire a majority stake in the company from The Carlyle Group. In July 2022, the company went public again.
Gallery
The Getty Images Gallery was located at 46 Eastcastle Street, London.
In 2008, it hosted an exhibition of children for Barnardo's child adoption agency, in an exhibition called "Home Time", aimed at helping to find homes for hundreds of children waiting for adoption. It included photographs by celebrity photographer Cambridge Jones, as well as by Cherie Blair, Bruce Oldfield, Andrew Lincoln, Gail Porter, and Claudia Winkleman.
The gallery permanently closed in January 2019.
Copyright enforcement and controversy
Beginning in 2008, Getty Images has been the subject of controversy for its methods of pursuing copyright enforcement on behalf of its photographers. Rather than pursue a policy of sending "cease and desist" notices, Getty typically mails a demand letter that claims substantial monetary damages from owners of websites it believes infringed on their photographers' copyrights. Getty commonly tries to intimidate website owners by sending collection agents, even though a demand letter does not create a debt.