Getty Images

How it happened

Getty Images, a longtime stock-media and editorial-photo licensor, returned to public markets via SPAC in 2022 at a valuation around $5B. Debt load, secular pressure on stock imagery, and concerns about generative AI weighed on the stock, cutting its market cap roughly 94% to about $0.30B. Glassdoor reviews from the period echo those pressures from inside: employees repeatedly flagged the threat from AI-generated art and described leadership as slow-moving and risk-averse, too cautious to modernize as free image generators improved. Several also said the shift to being public brought tighter cost-cutting — trimmed sales commissions and quiet layoffs — and later, uncertainty around the pending Shutterstock merger. That merger, agreed in January 2025 to create a roughly $3.7B combined company, was terminated on July 7, 2026 after the UK's Competition and Markets Authority conditioned clearance on Getty selling Shutterstock's editorial business — a condition Getty's board refused.

Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.