Shutterstock, Inc., a technology company, provides quality content, and creative workflow solutions in North America, Europe, and internationally. It offers image services consisting of photographs, vectors, and illustrations, which is used in visual communications, such as websites, digital and print marketing materials, corporate communications, books, publications, and others; footage services, including video clips, filmed by industry experts and cinema grade video effects, and HD and 4K formats that are integrated into Websites, social media, marketing campaigns, and cinematic productions; and music services comprising music tracks and sound effects, which are used to complement images and footage. The company provides its services under the Shutterstock, Bigstock, Offset, TurboSquid,PremiumBeat brand names, as well as Application programming interface to enhance workflow and project management needs, and search capabilities. It serves corporate professionals and organizations, media and broadcast companies, and small and medium-sized businesses, and individual creators. The company was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
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1. Etsy for digital creative assets.
2. Amazon for licensing stock photos, videos, and music.
3. YouTube, but for licensing professional images and videos instead of just streaming them.
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- Stock Photos: Provides a vast library of high-quality, royalty-free photographs for licensing.
- Stock Video: Offers a comprehensive collection of video clips and footage for commercial and creative projects.
- Stock Music: Supplies royalty-free music tracks and sound effects for various media productions.
- Vectors & Illustrations: Licenses scalable vector graphics and digital illustrations for design and marketing purposes.
- Editorial Content: Delivers timely images and videos covering news, sports, and entertainment events for editorial use.
- AI Image Generator: An online tool enabling users to create unique images from text descriptions using artificial intelligence.
- Custom Content Creation: Provides bespoke services for businesses to commission and produce custom visual content tailored to their specific needs.
- 3D Models: Offers a library of digital 3D assets for use in design, animation, and immersive projects.
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Shutterstock (symbol: SSTK) serves a highly diversified customer base, ranging from individual creators to large corporations. Due to the nature of its business model, which involves licensing content to millions of users, Shutterstock does not typically disclose specific "major customer companies" in the traditional sense where a significant portion of its revenue is concentrated in a few named entities.
Instead, Shutterstock describes its customer base in the following categories:
- Individual Professionals: This segment includes freelancers, designers, bloggers, marketers, and other professionals who require stock content for personal projects, small businesses, or client work.
- Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs): These are companies that use Shutterstock's content for their marketing, advertising, internal communications, and other business needs. They often subscribe directly through Shutterstock's platforms.
- Large Enterprises and Global Brands: This category includes large corporations, media companies, and agencies that often have custom agreements, dedicated support, and require high volumes of content, legal indemnification, and workflow integration for their extensive marketing and content creation efforts.
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Jon Oringer, Founder and Executive Chairman
Jon Oringer founded Shutterstock in 2003, starting with thousands of his own digital photographs and establishing the first global subscription image marketplace. He served as CEO until April 2020, becoming Executive Chairman. A serial entrepreneur, Oringer developed one of the internet's first pop-up blockers in the 1990s and launched approximately ten small startups selling software products. Shutterstock went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012. He also co-founded Pareto Holdings. Oringer holds an MS in Computer Science from Columbia University and a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from Stony Brook University.
Paul Hennessy, Chief Executive Officer
Paul Hennessy joined Shutterstock as CEO in July 2022. His extensive career includes leadership roles at Vroom.com, Priceline.com, and Booking.com.
Rik Powell, Chief Financial Officer
Rik Powell was appointed Chief Financial Officer of Shutterstock, effective November 1, 2024. Before this role, he served as Shutterstock's SVP, Finance and Investor Relations. Prior to joining Shutterstock, Powell was CFO at Shake Shack and spent 16 years at Getty Images, including a three-year term as its finance chief.
Sejal Amin, Chief Technology Officer
Sejal Amin joined Shutterstock as Chief Technology Officer in September 2022. Her background includes leadership roles at Thomson Reuters and Khoros, and she holds academic credentials from Rutgers University.
John Lapham, General Counsel
John Lapham serves as the General Counsel for Shutterstock.
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The clear emerging threat to Shutterstock (SSTK) is the rapid advancement and widespread adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) for media creation.
This technology allows users to generate high-quality images, videos, illustrations, and even music on demand using AI models (such as Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and Adobe Firefly). This directly competes with Shutterstock's core business model of licensing human-created stock content.
As businesses and individuals increasingly utilize AI tools to create custom content quickly and often at a lower cost, the demand for traditional licensed stock assets could significantly decrease. This shift could devalue Shutterstock's extensive library of human-generated content and potentially impact contributor earnings, thereby affecting the supply side of its marketplace. While Shutterstock is actively investing in its own AI generation capabilities and integrating AI-generated content, this represents a fundamental disruption to its established market and value proposition.
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Shutterstock (SSTK) operates in several addressable markets, primarily focused on providing creative content and tools. Below are the estimated market sizes for their main products and services:
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Global Stock Images Market: The global stock images market was valued at approximately USD 5.09 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 7.27 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 7.4%. Other estimates place the global stock images market at USD 6.1 billion in 2025, with projections to expand to USD 10.1 billion by 2030. North America held the largest share of the global stock images market, accounting for 38.2% in 2024.
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Global Stock Video Market: The global stock video market was valued at USD 5.13 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach USD 9.14 billion by 2034, with a CAGR of 5.94%. Another source indicates the market size was USD 5.99 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach USD 9.98 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 8.75%. North America leads this market due to high content consumption.
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Global Stock Images and Videos Market (Combined): The combined global stock images and videos market was valued at USD 5.28 billion in 2023 and is anticipated to reach USD 7.94 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 7.05%. Another report estimated this market at USD 5.2 billion in 2023, projected to reach USD 9.3 billion by 2032.
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Global AI-Powered Design Tools Market: The global AI-powered design tools market was valued at USD 5.54 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow to USD 6.74 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.7%. It is projected to reach USD 14.92 billion by 2029 at a CAGR of 22.0%. Another estimate places the market at USD 4.4 billion in 2023, expected to be worth around USD 26.5 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 19.6%. North America was the largest region in this market in 2024.
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Global Digital Content Creation Market: This broader market, encompassing various digital media formats including text, images, audio, and video, was valued at USD 32.28 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to USD 69.80 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 13.9%. Other analyses show the market size at USD 32.26 billion in 2024, reaching USD 117.51 billion by 2034 with a CAGR of 13.8%. North America holds a significant share, with a projected market value of approximately USD 9.62 billion in 2025, representing about 45.4% of the global share.
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Global Content Marketing Market: This market, where Shutterstock's assets are extensively utilized, was valued at USD 575.55 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to USD 1845.26 billion by 2034, at an estimated CAGR of 13.82%. Another report valued the market at USD 413.2 billion in 2022 and projects it to reach USD 2 trillion by 2032, with a CAGR of 16.9%. The United States content marketing market is projected at USD 181.64 billion in 2025.
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Shutterstock (SSTK) is expected to drive future revenue growth over the next 2-3 years through several key strategies:
- AI-Driven Content and Services: Shutterstock is heavily focused on leveraging artificial intelligence to generate new revenue streams. This includes growth from AI-generated content subscriptions, strategic partnerships related to AI content, and providing data for AI model training. The company has explicitly stated that continued investments in AI content services are a key driver for its target of $1.2 billion in revenue by 2027.
- Expansion of Data Distribution and Services: The data distribution and services segment is consistently highlighted as a significant growth area. Shutterstock is making substantial investments in this offering, which includes providing data for various purposes, including powering AI applications. This segment is expected to contribute meaningfully to overall revenue growth in the coming years.
- Strategic Acquisitions and Enhanced Content Offerings: Acquisitions play a crucial role in Shutterstock's growth strategy. The integration of companies like Envato has significantly expanded Shutterstock's content library and subscriber base, directly contributing to content revenue and diversifying its product suite. These acquisitions are instrumental in attracting new customers and strengthening relationships with existing clients by filling product gaps and increasing engagement.
- Subscriber Growth: Driven by strategic acquisitions and an expanded range of creative assets, Shutterstock anticipates continued growth in its subscriber count. For example, the Envato acquisition alone more than doubled Shutterstock's subscriber count and increased subscription revenue as a percentage of total content revenue. This expansion of the subscriber base is a fundamental driver of recurring revenue.
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Share Repurchases
- On June 7, 2023, Shutterstock's Board of Directors approved a stock repurchase program authorizing the Company to purchase up to $100 million of its common stock.
- Recent quarterly buybacks include $21.00 million as of September 30, 2024, and $20.59 million as of June 30, 2024.
- In the third quarter of 2025, the company used $20.999 million for the repurchase of treasury shares.
Share Issuance
- Shutterstock is undergoing a merger with Getty Images, where shareholders can elect to receive $28.8487 in cash per share, 13.67 shares of Getty Images common stock, or a combination of $9.50 cash and 9.17 shares of Getty Images common stock for each Shutterstock share held.
- As of September 30, 2025, 41,024 thousand shares were issued, compared to 40,395 thousand shares as of December 31, 2024, reflecting some share issuance.
- Cash paid related to the settlement of employee taxes linked to RSU vesting was $4.092 million in Q3 2025 and $1.473 million in Q2 2025, indicating ongoing share issuances for employee compensation.
Outbound Investments
- Shutterstock has made a total of 17 acquisitions, with an average of 2.2 acquisitions per year over the last five years (2019–2024).
- Significant acquisitions include Envato in May 2024 for $245 million, Giphy in May 2023 for $53 million, and Pond5 in May 2022 for $210 million.
- Other notable acquisitions include PicMonkey (September 2021, $110 million), TurboSquid (January 2021, $75 million), and Amper Music (November 2020, undisclosed).
Capital Expenditures
- Cash used in investing activities for capital expenditures and content acquisition was $11.6 million in Q3 2025, $15.4 million in Q2 2025, and $11.7 million in Q1 2025.
- Capital expenditures are primarily focused on necessary capital investments in internal-use software and website development costs.
- Investments are also directed towards AI and machine learning to enhance search capabilities and content recommendations.
