Getty Images announced on Tuesday that it has terminated its planned merger with Shutterstock, following a condition set by the UK competition regulator that required the sale of Shutterstock's editorial business for approval.
The two companies, both major players in the licensed visual content sector, had announced their merger agreement in January of last year, aiming to create a $3.7 billion stock image giant for the AI era.
The collapse of the deal comes as both firms face intensifying competition from AI image generation tools, which offer a cheaper and more accessible means of creating visual content.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) granted conditional approval for the merger in May, stipulating that Shutterstock must divest its editorial business unit to address concerns over its control of UK news content supply.
Comments