• Facebook is acquiring Giphy, the popular GIF database, both companies confirmed Friday.
  • Giphy will become part of the Instagram team, and its GIF library will continue to be operational and usable on partnering apps and platforms.
  • News outlets are reporting the deal was valued between $300 million and $400 million.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Facebook is acquiring Giphy, the popular service used by consumers to create the short, looping ‘GIF’ animations that litter social media, in a surprise deal reportedly valued between $300 million and $400 million.

The move, which represents one of Facebook’s largest deals in years, would give Facebook control of an important tool that keeps users engaged on its various apps, as well as valuable data that shows how consumers are using competing services.

Giphy, a New York-based startup founded in 2013, will be folded into the team at Faebook-owned Instagram, Facebook said in a blog post on Friday. The company said that Giphy’s vast library GIFs will continue to operate separately.

A Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider that the deal closed on Friday morning. The companies did not disclose how much Giphy sold for, but news outlets pegged the price at between $300 million and $400 million. That would represent a steep discount to Giphy’s last valuation as a private company in 2017, when Giphy fetched at $600 million valuaton, as reported in Business Insider, after raising $150 million in funding.

The timing of the deal - amid the coronavirus pandemic that has squeezed many startups and big businesses alike - may have allowed Facebook to snap Giphy up at a bargain price. Facebook had unsuccesfully tried to acquire Giphy in 2015, according to CNBC.

Gipyhy also said that third-party apps that have integrated the GIF library into their platforms will still be able to do so. Partnering platforms who use GIPHY include Tinder, Twitter, Snapchat, and Slack. Instagram and Facebook have also long used GIPHY to provide GIFs in Instagram Stories and Direct Messages, as well as Facebook Messenger.

"By bringing Instagram and GIPHY together, we can make it easier for people to find the perfect GIFs and stickers in Stories and Direct," Facebook executive Vishal Shah wrote in the post. "A lot of people in our community already know and love GIPHY. In fact, 50% of GIPHY's traffic comes from the Facebook family of apps, half of that from Instagram alone."

The companies did not disclose how much GIPHY sold for, but news outlets value the deal between $300 million and $400 million.

GIPHY was created in 2013, and has since become the most popular platform for finding and uploading billions of GIFs. The company was most recently valued at $600 million in 2017, as reported in Business Insider, after raising $150 million in funding.

"Based on the success of those collaborations (and many others) we know that there are exciting times ahead of us," GIPHY wrote Friday in a blog post on Medium. "GIPHY's GIFs, Stickers, Emojis, etc. aren't going anywhere. We will continue to make GIPHY openly available to the wider ecosystem."