Shares of Getty Images Holdings Inc. more than doubled in value on Monday after the company disclosed a licensing agreement with OpenAI. In premarket trading in New York, the stock briefly touched levels 200% above Friday’s close before settling at $1.35, a gain of roughly 123%. The move erased a portion of the 55% decline the shares had suffered this year, a slump driven by fears that generative artificial intelligence would render stock-photo libraries obsolete.

The deal grants OpenAI access to Getty’s library of some 477 million images and videos for use in visual search and discovery features within ChatGPT. Neither party disclosed financial terms, and it remains unclear whether the images will be used to train future AI models. The agreement marks a strategic pivot for Getty, which in early 2023 sued Stability AI for copyright infringement, alleging that the Stable Diffusion image generator had been trained on its content without permission. A London court dismissed that suit last November. Getty’s chief executive, Craig Peters, described the partnership as a step toward more reliable AI-generated content.

Viewed from New York, the rally reflects a reassessment of the threat generative AI poses to incumbent content owners. Getty, which went public in 2022 at a valuation of $4.8 billion, had seen its market capitalisation shrink to $253 million before the announcement. The company is simultaneously awaiting regulatory clearance for its $3.7 billion acquisition of rival Shutterstock. OpenAI, meanwhile, is pursuing a broader strategy of securing licensed content: it has struck similar agreements with Reddit, Time, News Corp and Condé Nast, even as it faces lawsuits from publishers such as The New York Times over unauthorised use of material for training.

In São Paulo, the appetite for AI-linked assets was underscored by Hurst Capital, an alternative-investment platform, which reported selling 89% of a complementary lot of Certificados de Recebíveis tied to OpenAI. The instruments offer qualified Brazilian retail investors economic exposure to the privately held developer of ChatGPT, with a minimum commitment of R$10,000. The first lot had sold out in 48 hours. OpenAI, valued at about $850 billion, is widely expected to pursue an initial public offering that could push its valuation above $1 trillion. The next milestones to watch are the antitrust review of Getty’s Shutterstock purchase and any signal from OpenAI on whether it will use licensed images for model training.