Per CNBC

Shutterstock is now buying Giphy from Meta at a massive discount. Facebook's parent company purchased Giphy for $315 million in 2020 but was now selling it for a cash deal worth $53 million.

In 2020, when the company bought Giphy for $315 million, UK's competition authority ordered Meta to divest the company. Shutterstock said the acquisition would only result in "minimal revenue in 2023."

When Meta bought Giphy, it was ordered by UK's Competition and Markets Authority to divest its recent acquisition in 2022. The reason behind the order was reportedly due to "anti-competitive effects."

In June 2020, the CMA disclosed that it was probing the deal. Aside from that, the CMA also blocked another major acquisition in April involving Microsoft and Activision, which would have been worth $69 billion.

This comes as tech companies have been facing increased acquisition scrutiny in the UK and the US due to user data collection.

Meta gave a statement to CNBC regarding their experience with Giphy and described the situation as an "uncertain time for their business." The company's spokesperson still thanked the Giphy team.

“We are grateful to the Giphy team during this uncertain time for their business, and wish them every success,”

In October, while Meta was still doubling down on the metaverse, its own employees found the company's flagship VR metaverse app too buggy to use, per the executive in charge. This came despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg pouring billions per year into building his vision of the metaverse.

In March, Meta was reportedly looking at the possibility of creating another standalone app that would compete with Twitter. The app would have reportedly been a decentralized social network allowing users to share text updates.

A Meta spokesperson shared that they believed there was an opportunity for this market and that it would allow creators and public figures to share updates.

See flow at unusualwhales.com/flow.

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