Royalty-free image site Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

Unsplash, home of one of the largest collections of free to use images on the modern web with two million images and billions of downloads over the years, is being acquired by Getty Images, the company announced on Tuesday.

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In a blog post explaining the decision, Unsplash founder Mikael Cho said that the company first met the Getty Images team in 2016, but that it wasn’t sure if Getty fully understood the business model since the latter’s business model is built primarily on making money from licensing images for use. “Over years of conversations, however, we learned about the level of respect they had for the Unsplash community and the rights of creators to choose how and where their imagery is made available,” he said.

Cho said that after years of conversations, they learned that Getty Images had a great deal of respect for the Unsplash community and the rights of creators to choose how and where their imagery is made available. “Craig Peters, Getty Images CEO, told me, ‘We have so much admiration for Unsplash. What you’re doing for creativity and what you’ve built is incredible,” Cho said.

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Seeking to allay fears that this was the end of the road for the popular site that just crossed the 3 billion download mark this year after hitting 2 billion downloads in 2020, Cho said this wasn’t “one of those tech acquisitions where the company is bought to be shut down”. Instead, Unsplash will continue to operate as a standalone brand and division of Getty Images and work on two existing ventures, Unsplash for Brands and Unsplash Hire, he said.