Getty Images, a massive image licensing company with hundreds of millions of assets in its library, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the company plans to undergo a restructuring process and emerge as a private company, with support from billionaire Charles Koch’s investment firm, by the end of the year. (ARTnews and THR are both owned by Penske Media Corporation, which has had an exclusive global media partnership with Getty Images since the fall of 2022.)
The bankruptcy announcement on Monday follows a failed $3.7 billion merger between Getty Images and Shutterstock, a rival photo and video licensing marketplace, announced in January 2025. The goal at the time was to “combine in a merger of equals transaction, creating a premier visual content company.” The new company would be called Getty Images Holdings, Inc.; Getty Images’s chief executive Craig Peters would stay on as CEO of the new entity.
Instead, a year and half later, the deal was off, due to a regulatory roadblock in the UK that would force Getty Images Holdings, Inc., to sell off the editorial side of Shutterstock, which the board of Getty Images viewed as a nonstarter. At its earnings call in August, THR reported, Peters said that Getty Images had spent more than $100 million on the failed Shutterstock merger.
In the coming months, Getty Images plans to transition from a publicly traded company to a private one, with the help of some $500 million from Koch Equity Development, which has backed Getty since 2018. A Getty Images spokesperson told THR that the bankruptcy process would not involve layoffs, nor would the company’s operations, content partners, or vendors be impacted.