Facebook acquired Giphy in 2020 for about $400 million.
Giphy was founded in 2013 by Alex Chung and Jace Cooke as a search engine for animated GIFs. It later became a major library and distribution platform, allowing users and developers to find and share short looping animations through websites, messaging services, and social-media apps.
Facebook announced the acquisition in May 2020. Reports valued the transaction at approximately $400 million. Facebook said Giphy would join Instagram and that its GIF library and creator tools would continue to be available through existing partners and integrations.
The deal received regulatory scrutiny in the United Kingdom because Giphy supplied GIF content to competing platforms, including Twitter, TikTok, and Snapchat. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority ordered Facebook, later Meta, to sell Giphy in 2022. Shutterstock agreed to acquire Giphy in 2023, subject to approval. Thus, Facebook did acquire Giphy, but the purchase was later undone through a forced divestiture.