 | |
| Company type | Privately held company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Stock photography, stock footage, stock music |
| Founded | 3 April 2005 |
| Founder | Andy Sitt, Stephanie Sitt |
| Fate | Active |
| Headquarters | Selangor, Malaysia |
Number of employees | 350 (2015) |
| Parent | Inmagine Group |
| Website | 123rf |
123RF, a branch of Inmagine Group, is a stock photos provider founded in 2005 which sells royalty-free images and stock photography. The company also has an expansive collection of vector graphics, icons, fonts, videos, and audio files.
In 2000, 123RF founder Andy Sitt left his job at a British company that sold stock images in CDs while showing customers printed catalogs. Andy launched his e-commerce business by setting up Inmagine, selling premium large-format photo prints. Working together with co-founder and current CEO Stephanie Sitt, [1] Inmagine Group is one of the few technology companies to have bootstrapped globally from Asia.[ citation needed ]
From the beginning, Inmagine produced proprietary content which required in-house photographers, graphic designers, professional models, makeup artists, and a sales team to cater to demand.[ citation needed ]
In 2005, Inmagine set up 123RF, which offers royalty-free stock images, videos, and audio clips. Unlike the previous business model, 123RF allows photographers around the world to sell their work on the platform under a crowdsourcing model. [2]
In 2011, Inmagine established a global presence with 44 regional offices worldwide. [3] Offices were founded in North and Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australasia. [4]
In 2019, Inmagine consolidated and streamlined its offerings into three main products: 123RF, Pixlr, and Designs.ai. The launching of Pixlr Market (now Stock by Pixlr) and Pixlr Editor commences. [5]
In 2020, the company launched its first artificial intelligence platform, Inmagine Brain. [6] In November 2020, the company confirmed that it had been subject to a data breach, with 8.3 million customer records available for sale on the dark web. [7]
Through 123RF, Inmagine created a visual guide in 2021 to predict image search trends. [8]
In June 2022, the company launched its free images section where audiences can download images for free, but with only a limited amount of daily downloads. [9]
In 2023, 123RF launched its AI-powered Search for more precise and intuitive searching. [10] AI Image Variations, a feature that uses machine learning to generate multiple unique variations of a single image [11] and AI Image Generator, [12] a tool that generates custom images based on users' specific prompts. [13]
The platform now offers a range of AI tools. These include Generative Fill [14] for removing and replacing unwanted content or objects within images, Image Extender [15] for expanding image size, Image Upscaler [16] for increasing image resolution and improving image quality, Background Remix [17] for modifying and generating image backgrounds, Background Remover [18] for isolating subjects, Sketch to Image [19] for transforming sketches into photorealistic images, Writer [20] for generating and optimizing text content, Background Blur [21] for creating a bokeh effect, and Faceswap [22] for effortless face replacement. These tools leverage machine learning to enhance image editing, creation, and search capabilities, providing users with more efficient and creative workflows.
In March 2017, 123RF acquired TheHungryJPEG, a UK-registered font and graphics marketplace and its sister company Craftbundles for an undisclosed sum. [23] [24]
In April 2017, 123RF acquired Pixlr, an online web-based image editor from Autodesk for an undisclosed sum. [25]
In November 2017, 123RF acquired Vectr, a web-based vector editor and Story & Heart, a video education platform. [26]
Shutterstock, Inc. is an American provider of stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools; it is headquartered in New York. Founded in 2003 by programmer and photographer Jon Oringer, Shutterstock maintains a library of around 200 million royalty-free stock photos, vector graphics, and illustrations, with around 10 million video clips and music tracks available for licensing. Originally a subscription site only, Shutterstock expanded beyond subscriptions into a la carte pricing in 2008. It has been publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange since 2012.
The Naver Corporation is a South Korean internet conglomerate headquartered in Seongnam that operates the search engine Naver. Naver established itself as an early pioneer in the use of user-generated content through the creation of the online Q&A platform Knowledge iN.
Qlik [pronounced "klik"] provides a data integration, analytics, and artificial intelligence platform. The software company was founded in 1993 in Lund, Sweden and is now based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, United States. Thoma Bravo made the company private in 2016.
Imgur is an American online image sharing and image hosting service with a focus on social gossip that was founded by Alan Schaaf in 2009. The service has hosted viral images and memes, particularly those posted on Reddit.
Pinterest is an American social media service for publishing and discovery of information in the form of pinboards. This includes recipes, home, style, motivation, and inspiration on the Internet using image sharing. Pinterest, Inc. was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp, and is headquartered in San Francisco.
Pixlr is a group of AI-powered SaaS creative tools including Pixlr.com, Designs.ai and Vectr.com. Pixlr.com is a cloud-based set of image editing tools and utilities, including AI image generation and enhancements.
Alamy Limited is a British privately owned stock photography agency launched in September 1999. It is an online supplier of stock images, videos, and other image material. Their content comes from agencies and independent photographers, or are collected from news archives, museums, national collections, and public domain content copied from Wikimedia Commons. Its headquarters are in Milton Park, near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. It has a development and operations centre at Technopark in Trivandrum, Kerala, India, and a sales office in Brooklyn, New York, United States.
HungryGoWhere is a food and restaurant review website based in Singapore.
Pond5 is a New York–based online marketplace for royalty-free media. The company licenses stock footage, stock music, stock photography, sound effects, Adobe After Effects templates, and 3D models. Pond5 claims to have the world's largest collection of stock footage, and that they host more than 38 million clips as of September 2023.
Yury Melnichek is a tech-entrepreneur, venture investor and software engineer. He was born in Minsk (Belarus), lived in Switzerland for more than 16 years and now lives in Cyprus. He was the founder of the free cartographic service MapsWithMe, AIMATTER company and Vochi. In December 2021, together with Anna Melnichek, founded the investment company Melnichek Investments to invest in promising machine learning and biotech startups. Apart from investment activities, Yury provides consulting services in venture investment, mobile applications marketing, and also provides consultancy services for IT-companies and startups working with machine learning, computer vision and data science.
In Vichet, is the co-founder and CEO of one of Cambodia’s first and most successful forays into e-commerce. He and his three other siblings founded Little Fashion in December 2010. He is also co-founder of Khmerload, also known as Mediaload, the first Cambodian tech startup to receive investment from Silicon Valley investors. It secured seed funding of $200,000 from 500 Startups in 2017. Channel NewsAsia featured Vichet as one of the great disruptors in Cambodia.
Voyagin was a tour and activity online booking platform headquartered in Tokyo. The company was founded in 2011 as FindJPN, rebranded as Voyagin in 2012 by its founders, then rebranded again by Rakuten.
Clarifai is a leader in AI orchestration and development, helping organizations, teams, and developers build, deploy, orchestrate, and operationalize AI at scale. Clarifai’s cutting-edge AI workflow orchestration platform leverages today's modern AI technologies like Large Language Model(LLMs), Large Vision Model (LVMs), and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), data labeling, inference, and more, and is available in cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments. Founded in 2013, Clarifai has been used to build more than 1.5 million AI models with more than 400,000 users in 170 countries.
Fotor is a multi-platform photo editing software. It was first launched in 2012 and was dubbed "Photoshop Lite" by the BBC.
Lightricks, founded in January 2013, is a company that develops video and image editing mobile apps and software, known particularly for its selfie-editing app, Facetune. Headquartered in Jerusalem, the firm has approximately 600 employees. As of 2023, its apps have been downloaded over 730 million times. In 2024, Lightricks introduced LTX Studio, a platform for creating and editing videos using AI.
Zscaler, Inc. is an American cloud security company based in San Jose, California. The company offers cloud-based services to protect enterprise networks and data.
VistaCreate is an online graphic design platform for non-designers, launched in 2016. As of 2022, it has more than 10 million users in 192 countries.
Matterport Inc. is an American 3D spatial mapping company that is currently headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company was founded in 2011 as a private startup and subsequently merged with a special-purpose acquisition company in 2021 to commence public trading on the Nasdaq. The current CEO is R.J. Pittman.
HomeToGo is a Berlin-based company that operates a SaaS-supported marketplace for vacation rentals. Founded in 2014, the platform aggregates listings from multiple providers, with 15 million accommodations available through partnerships with 60,000 suppliers. HomeToGo operates in 25 countries across Europe, North America, South America, Australia, and the Asia-Pacific region.
Bynder B.V. is an international software company with offices in the US, Spain, UK, and Australia, specializing in digital asset management (DAM) services. The company's cloud-based digital asset management platform enables users to create, store, find, share, deliver, and utilize digital files efficiently.
