Getty Images Holdings, Inc.

In 1995, Mark Getty and chief executive officer Jonathan Klein co-founded Getty Investments LLC in London. Mark Getty is the company's chairman.

In September 1997, Getty Communications, as it was called at the time, merged with PhotoDisc, Inc. to form Getty Images. The company relocated to Seattle two years later and expanded in the United States, reaching 2,000 employees by 2006. In April 2003, Getty Images entered into a partnership with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to market each other's images.

Getty Images acquired the Michael Ochs Archives in February 2007. The Michael Ochs Archives were described by The New York Times as "the premier source of musician photography in the world".

In 2008, the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman (H&F) acquired Getty Images for $2.4 billion. In 2012, H&F put Getty up for sale. As of the ensuing sale to Carlyle Group, the company was said to have an archive that included 80 million stills and illustrations. The company was acquired by the Getty family in 2018.

The company moved to its current headquarters, in the Union Station office complex in Seattle's International District, in 2011.

In 2015, Jonathan Klein became the company's chairman, and Dawn Airey was hired as chief executive officer (CEO) of Getty Images. Airey remained in the role until 31 December 2018, at which time she became a non-executive director member of its board and Craig Peters was appointed CEO.

In 2019, Getty Images introduced Market Freeze, simplifying the exclusivity of rights-managed images. Later that year, it announced that due to customers' changing needs, it plans to phase out rights-managed imagery by 2020 in favor of royalty-free images.

In December 2021, Getty Images announced its intention to become publicly traded once more through a combination with CC Neuberger Principal Holdings II. In July 2022, the SPAC merger was completed, and the newly formed parent company of Getty Images went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol GETY.

The company's share price peaked in August 2022 at over $30, falling to less than $5 by October 2022. Activist investor Trillium Capital made an unsolicited bid to acquire Getty for US$4 billion in April 2023 – representing nearly a 100 percent premium. Getty turned down the offer, questioning its credibility.

In September 2023, Getty announced that it was partnering with Nvidia to launch Generative AI by Getty Images, a new tool that lets people create images using Getty's library of licensed photos. Getty will use Nvidia's Edify model, which is available on Nvidia's generative AI model library, Picasso. Their stock footage is used in Baby Einstein and Little Einsteins.

In January 2025, it was announced that the company would be merging with Shutterstock. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority launched an investigation into the proposed merger in August 2025.

In February 2026, the United States Department of Justice concluded its review and granted unconditional antitrust clearance for the merger under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. Getty Images reported record full-year 2025 revenue of $981.3 million, the highest in the company's 30-year history.

In March 2026, the company issued a 'going concern' warning, stating that it is high in debt driven by costly measures such as merging with Shutterstock and several legal disputes, as well as company irrelevance driven by the steep rise of artificial intelligence.

In July 2026, Getty Images moved to terminate its planned $3.7 billion merger with Shutterstock after the UK Competition and Markets Authority required Shutterstock to divest its global editorial business as a condition for approval. Getty’s board voted unanimously not to proceed with the divestiture process, effectively ending the deal unless circumstances changed before July 7, 2026.