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Getty Images Hit Record Revenue. Then Came Bankruptcy.

Short answer: Getty Images did not simply lose to artificial intelligence. In 2025 it reported the highest revenue in its history, about $981 million. On October 21, 2026, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware. Here is the rise, the rivalry, and the question the AI story never answers.

You have never met a Getty photographer. But you have seen their work, today, probably before lunch: the prime minister stepping out of a car, a runner crossing a finish line with her arms thrown wide, the smiling couple looking at a laptop. Somewhere in the corner, in small gray letters, a name. For thirty years, one company has stood quietly behind a huge share of the images that tell you what the world looks like.

A company built by buying

Mark Getty, a descendant of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, and his partner Jonathan Klein started the company in London in March 1995. Their first move was to buy Tony Stone Images. In 1996 they bought the Hulton archive, about fifteen million press photographs, and listed on the Nasdaq. After merging with PhotoDisc and buying the sports agency Allsport, revenue reached about $185 million by the end of 1998, and Getty was the largest visual content provider in the world.

The strategy was consolidation: buy the small agencies one by one and stitch them into one catalog. It worked, and it set up a rivalry.

The rivalry with Bill Gates

Corbis began in 1989 as Interactive Home Systems, backed by Bill Gates, and grew into a serious picture library that owned the Bettmann Archive. Getty moved its headquarters from London to Seattle in 1999, a short drive from its rival. For years the two traded blows. A former Corbis employee later wrote that, in its twenty-seven years, the company never made a profit and survived because Gates kept it afloat. In January 2016 Corbis sold its licensing business to Visual China Group, and Klein posted: "Almost 21 years but got it."

Getty had won. And that, looking back, is where the story starts to get uncomfortable.

Four owners in thirty years

After the win, the company kept changing hands: Hellman & Friedman took it private in 2008 in a deal worth about $2.4 billion, Carlyle bought it in 2012 in a deal valued at about $3.3 billion, and in 2018 the Getty family bought a majority stake back. In July 2022 it returned to the stock market through a SPAC, in a deal valued at about $4.8 billion. By October that year the shares were below five dollars.

The record-revenue paradox

In January 2025 Getty announced a $3.7 billion merger with its closest rival, Shutterstock. The US Justice Department cleared it. The UK Competition and Markets Authority said it would approve the deal only if Shutterstock sold its entire editorial business. Getty offered to sell just two agencies, the regulator refused, and in July 2026 Getty's board voted to walk away. In June the stock had closed at 64 cents, and a multi-year deal with OpenAI briefly more than doubled it.

Is AI part of the story? Yes: in the second quarter of 2026, Getty's creative (stock) revenue fell about 2.6% while editorial revenue, the news, sports and archive, grew about 9.2%. But a company does not report record revenue and then fall apart because of one thing. We go through what Getty's own filings show, and the clock that kept running in the background, in the video.

The ending, so far

On October 12, 2026, Getty announced an agreement with its major stakeholders: the Getty family and Koch Equity Development, the investment arm of Koch Incorporated, would put in up to about $533 million of new equity, the company would go private, and its existing shares would be cancelled with no payment to their owners. On October 21 it filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware, as the agreement required.

Getty says it will keep operating normally and expects the process to be finished by the end of 2026. Chapter 11 is a process, not a funeral, and many companies come out the other side. The filing is only days old, so details may still change.

Watch the full video on YouTube →

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Sources (public): Getty Images press release and Form 8-K, Oct 12-13, 2026; Getty Images Q1 and Q2 2026 results (SEC EDGAR); The Next Web on the October 2026 filing and the Shutterstock merger; Fstoppers (Jul 13, 2026); Octus (Sep 22, 2026); Wikipedia and FundingUniverse for company history. This article is history, not investment advice.

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