Getty Images stock experienced a dramatic surge in pre-market trading, climbing +137.2% after the company disclosed a multi-year display agreement with OpenAI that will place Getty’s licensed images inside ChatGPT’s search and discovery features.
The partnership was announced on the evening of June 21, 2026. Under the agreement, Getty’s visual content will be made available across OpenAI’s search and discovery experiences within ChatGPT, a move the company said will expand the visual quality of responses users receive from the AI platform.
Getty Images’ chief executive, Craig Peters, framed the deal as a quality and trust initiative, stating: "High-quality, licensed visual content makes AI-powered search and discovery more useful and more trustworthy. This partnership with OpenAI reflects a shared recognition of that, and together we will deliver richer visual experiences to ChatGPT users."
The OpenAI arrangement extends Getty’s recent strategy of commercializing its vast content library through AI-centric licensing initiatives. The company has already engaged in a multi-year partnership with Perplexity and executed a renewed agreement with Canva, both described as efforts to embed Getty’s licensed assets into AI workflows and to open potential recurring revenue streams. Getty did not disclose financial terms for the OpenAI deal in its release.
Market mechanics amplified the magnitude of the pre-market move. Getty Images had been trading near its 52-week low of $0.582 prior to the announcement and in March 2026 received a written notice from the New York Stock Exchange indicating non-compliance with the exchange’s minimum average closing price rule. That notice did not trigger immediate delisting; instead, Getty was afforded a six-month cure period to regain compliance.
Investors and traders also reacted within a constructive broader market environment. On the same day, the S&P 500 was up +1.1% and the NASDAQ rose +1.9%, a backdrop that can favor risk assets and companies tied to AI awareness. Getty’s shares have shown high volatility over the past year, recording 58 instances of moves greater than 5%, but the OpenAI announcement produced an unusually large pre-market repricing given the firm’s recent operational and revenue challenges.
Analysts and market participants following the company pointed to a sequence of setbacks in recent reporting that made the OpenAI news comparatively more impactful. Getty missed expectations in its Q1 2026 earnings release and has been contending with ongoing headwinds in agency revenue. Against that backdrop of depressed valuation and uneven near-term performance, even a partial reassessment of the company’s licensing prospects - particularly around AI applications - was sufficient to trigger an outsized overnight reaction in the stock.
Taken together, the OpenAI partnership has shifted the immediate narrative for Getty Images. By positioning its licensed content as an input for AI-driven search and discovery, the company is emphasizing the potential for increased demand and usage of its visual assets in emerging AI products. For investors watching a stock that had traded near multi-year lows, the possibility that Getty’s content could become a more integral component of AI ecosystems appears to have been a catalyst for the pre-market rally.
What to watch next
- Whether the OpenAI integration translates into measurable usage and revenue growth for Getty’s licensed assets.
- Whether the company can use this and other AI licensing agreements to offset the agency revenue pressure that contributed to recent earnings headwinds.
- Progress toward resolving the NYSE written notice and meeting the exchange’s minimum price requirements within the allotted cure period.