The roughly 360 Getty Images employees who work near Lumen Field will keep their jobs.

Getty Images, the visual media company headquartered at 605 Fifth Ave. S. since 2011, announced Monday, Oct. 12, that it plans to file for bankruptcy and return to private ownership under the Getty and Koch families.

The company said it does not expect the restructuring to lead to layoffs, and that customers, photographers and vendors will be unaffected.

The deal aims to shed a $2.1 billion debt load. Getty reported that debt figure as of June 30 against just $50 million in cash and a fully drawn $30 million credit line, first reported by the Seattle Times.

Under the prepackaged bankruptcy plan, the Getty family and Koch Equity Development will invest up to $533 million in new equity and take 100% ownership. Holders of 83.5% of the company's unsecured bonds have agreed to retire $270 million in outstanding notes, according to a company press release. Secured lenders representing about 89% of Getty's secured bonds will reduce interest costs and extend repayment timelines.

Getty's stock had lost more than 99% of its value since going public again, falling from more than $33 in August 2022 to $0.02 before the announcement. The New York Stock Exchange began delisting proceedings in late September, citing an "abnormally low selling price."

The collapse followed a string of costly setbacks. Getty spent $108 million pursuing a $3.7 billion merger with rival Shutterstock, announced in January 2025. The company scrapped the deal in July after the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority demanded Getty sell off Shutterstock's editorial business. Getty refused.

The company also spent $17 million on its ongoing copyright lawsuit against AI firm Stability AI, according to PetaPixel. A court ordered Getty to pay more than $92 million to investors who alleged the company blocked them from claiming public stock at a fixed price when it went public in 2022.

S&P Global downgraded Getty's credit rating to CCC in September after a missed interest payment, citing "thinning liquidity."

"That's probably the main bad driver, is just the debt and the litigation payments," Brian Conneely, an S&P Global analyst, told the Seattle Times.

Conneely noted that while debt and legal costs drove the crisis, Getty's underlying business has strengths. The company's editorial division, which supplies news photos and video, generated almost 38% of revenue last year and is growing faster than its larger creative stock-image business.

Getty relies on more than 600,000 contributors worldwide and holds what it calls the world's largest privately owned photographic archive.

Generative AI poses a longer-term question for Getty's creative customers, who increasingly can produce images without licensing them. But the Seattle Times reported that AI is not the primary cause of Getty's current financial distress.

Getty expects to file for Chapter 11 in a U.S. bankruptcy court in the coming weeks. The filing will cover only certain U.S. entities. Co-founder and chairman Mark Getty said in the company's announcement that the deal would strengthen Getty's balance sheet and position the company for growth. The restructuring is expected to be complete by year-end 2026.