Shutterstock’s AI-Licensing Business Generated $104 Million

Shutterstock Inc., a marketplace of images and videos long used by content creators, has found a new growth engine: licensing the visual media in its library to train AI models.

Shutterstock’s latest deal was announced Tuesday with Reka AI, a startup that makes large language models — software trained on massive amounts of information that is the backbone of some types of generative artificial intelligence.

The licensing business with AI companies produced $104 million in revenue last year, Chief Executive Officer Paul J. Hennessy said in an interview.

Previously, Shutterstock has said it signed agreements with “anchor customers” ...