Meta selling Giphy for fraction of purchase price

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, sold the GIF-sharing platform Giphy to Shutterstock for $53 million, a fraction of the $400 million that the company reportedly paid for it in 2020. 

Shutterstock, a stock photo company, said in a release Tuesday that it has reached an agreement to acquire Giphy, which it called the world’s largest collection of GIFs — Graphics Interchange Format, a compression format for images — and stickers. 

The release states that Giphy draws in more than 1.3 billion search inquiries daily and is critical in text or message conversations on platforms such as Meta, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, Slack, Microsoft Teams and most mobile devices. 

“Shutterstock is in the business of helping people and brands tell their stories,” Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy said. “Through the GIPHY acquisition, we are extending our audience touch points beyond primarily professional marketing and advertising use cases and expanding into casual conversations. 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.” 

The release states that the sale is expected to close next month.

The sale came after British regulators blocked Meta from completing its acquisition of Giphy over concerns that it would stifle competition.  

The United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority had opened an antitrust investigation and ordered Meta to reverse the deal in 2021. The watchdog ruled that the only way to avoid the impact on competition would be for Meta to sell Giphy to an approved buyer. 

It found that the agreement would increase traffic for Meta-owned sites and limit access for other online platforms to the GIFs on Giphy. 

This was the first time that the watchdog blocked a technology acquisition deal. 

The Hill has reached out to Meta for comment. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.