If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s a GIF worth? Apparently hundreds of millions of dollars.
Facebook has agreed to a deal with Giphy to acquire the GIF platform for $400 million, according to Axios(opens in a new tab).
The report points out how Giphy was last valued at $600 million and had received around $150 million in funding since it launched in 2013. It also mentions how Facebook was in talks with the company for a partnership prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
At some point over the past few months, those talks turned to an acquisition.
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According to Giphy’s announcement(opens in a new tab), the company and its employees will join Instagram’s team. The goal is to make it even easier to deploy GIFs and stickers in Instagram stories and DMs.
As The Verge(opens in a new tab) mentions, Facebook has already deeply integrated Giphy into its platform. The social networking giant uses Giphy’s API to provide GIFs to Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
It will be interesting to see how Facebook’s acquisition affects Giphy’s many partnerships with competing social networking and messaging platforms. Last summer, the GIF company announced(opens in a new tab) a partnership with social video platform TikTok. Giphy also integrates with other social platforms like Twitter and messaging services like Slack.
