Shutterstock

How it happened

Shutterstock is a stock-media marketplace for images, video, and music that went public in 2012 and peaked at roughly $4.4B market cap in 2021. Its valuation declined organically — not via VC markdowns — amid competition and pressure from generative-AI content. In January 2025 it agreed to merge with Getty Images into a combined company valued at about $3.7B, but the deal collapsed in July 2026 after the UK's Competition and Markets Authority conditioned clearance on Getty divesting Shutterstock's editorial business — a condition Getty's board refused, terminating the agreement on July 7, 2026. Left standalone, the stock fell to around $0.30B, down roughly 93% from its 2021 peak. Glassdoor reviews across the slide described a workplace unsettled by frequent leadership turnover and the direction shifts it brought, recurring layoffs and re-orgs, and acquired brands like Pond5 folded in and wound down; several also voiced unease about what generative AI meant for the stock-content model.

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