Giphy

Co-founder Alex Chung at South by Southwest 2016

Giphy was founded by Alex Chung and Jace Cooke in February 2013.[5][6][7] The idea for the business came when the pair was having breakfast, musing on the rising trend of purely visual communication.[5]

When Chung and Cooke first launched Giphy, the website functioned solely as a search engine for GIFs. According to Chung, Giphy attracted around a million users during its first week and the figure leveled out to 300,000.[8]

Giphy features what its founders called as "conversational search" wherein contents are brought to users' conversations through a search box found in their messaging applications.[9]

In August 2013, Giphy expanded beyond a search engine to allow users to post, embed and share GIFs on Facebook.[10][11][12] Giphy was then recognized as a Top 100 Website of 2013, according to PC Magazine.[13] Three months later, Giphy integrated with Twitter to enable users to share GIFs by simply sharing a GIF's URL.[14]

In May 2014, Giphy raised $2.4 million in a Series A funding round from investors, including Quire, CAA Ventures, RRE Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, and Betaworks.[15]

In March 2015, Giphy acquired Nutmeg, a GIF messaging service, as one of the company's first major steps towards the mobile industry.[16] This coincided with the launch of Facebook Messenger's own development platform, in which Giphy joined a few exclusive apps in its debut.[16]

In August 2015, Giphy launched its second mobile app, GIPHY Cam, which allows users to create and share GIFs on a social network.[17]

In February 2016, Giphy raised $55 million in funding at a $300 million valuation.[18]

In October 2016, Giphy announced several statistics, including the statement that it had 100 million daily active users, that it served over 1 billion GIFs per day, and that visitors watched more than 2 million hours of GIF content every day.[19][20]

In July 2017, Giphy announced that it had 200 million daily active users between both the API and website, with around 250 million monthly active users on the website.[21]

Chung announced in a February 2019 New York event that Giphy was exploring an advertising scheme that is distinguished from the Google model, which shows ads according to users' search histories.[22] The idea is to embed advertising in private messages. Giphy is seeking to take advantage of this landscape since the GIG database has been integrated into most messaging services.[22]

In May 2020, it was announced that Giphy had agreed to be acquired by Facebook Inc. (now Meta Platforms), with a reported purchase price of $400 million. Facebook services had accounted for roughly half of Giphy's overall traffic. Giphy was to be integrated with the staff of Facebook subsidiary Instagram, although Facebook stated that there would be no immediate changes to the service.[23][24] Facebook discontinued Giphy's display advertising program upon the purchase.[25]

The acquisition faced scrutiny due to recent privacy scandals surrounding Facebook.[26] The United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) argued that the deal was potentially anti-competitive and began a probe. In June 2020, the CMA issued an enforcement order prohibiting Giphy from being fully integrated into Facebook, pending a future ruling.[27]

In August 2021, the CMA issued preliminary findings, arguing that there was the risk that Facebook could pull Giphy's services from competitors, or require them to provide more user data as a condition of service. It also showed concerns over the market share of Facebook's advertising services.[28][29][30] On November 30, 2021, the CMA ruled that Meta would be required to divest Giphy.[30][25] On July 18, 2022, the Competition Appeal Tribunal ordered the CMA to re-evaluate its decision on procedural grounds, as it "failed to properly consult" and "wrongly excised portions" of its decision. It otherwise upheld most of the CMA's original decision.[31][32][33]

On October 18, 2022, the CMA ruled for a second time that Meta be required to divest Giphy, stating that Meta already controls half of the advertising in the UK. Meta agreed to the sale, though it stated that it disagrees with the decision itself.[34]

In May 2023, Shutterstock announced it would buy Giphy from Meta Platforms Inc for $53 million in cash.[35][3] The acquisition was completed on June 23, 2023.[36]