Getty Images filed its quarterly report on 10 August. It contained the sentence no operating company wants to publish: substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern. The next session, shares of the visual-content marketplace, which licenses news, sports and stock photography under the Getty Images, iStock and Unsplash brands, fell 42.6% on 11.6m shares.

The same filing did not show a collapsing business. Second-quarter revenue was $229.1m, down 2.5% from a year earlier. Annual subscription revenue, now roughly 59% of the total, rose 7.1%. Editorial revenue, the news and sports archive, rose 9.2%. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization were $62.3m, down 8.4%.

The break was financial

What broke was the other side of the ledger. Getty carries $2.1bn of debt against $51.6m of cash and a market capitalization of about $129m. Free cash flow was minus $122.6m in the quarter, after $110.9m paid out on warrant litigation. The $150m revolving credit line is fully drawn at 7.76%. Management declined to give 2026 guidance and hired Guggenheim Securities on 21 July to review financing alternatives.

The proximate cause was a deal that did not happen. Getty's board resolved on 30 June not to divest Shutterstock's editorial business as Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) required, and the $3.7bn merger was terminated on 7 July. The termination triggered redemption of $628.4m of Getty's 10.5% senior secured notes. Eighteen months and more than $100m of professional and financing costs produced nothing.

Shutterstock, which licenses images, footage, music and 3D models under the Shutterstock, Envato, Pond5 and TurboSquid brands, took the other half of the damage. Its shares fell 19.0% on 28 July, when it reported revenue down 16.9% to $221.8m, wrote off $163.4m of goodwill, withdrew guidance for the rest of 2026 and cancelled its investor call. Analysts now model revenue falling 23.3% this year and another 8.0% next. At 0.27x forward sales and 0.57x book value, the shares price an orderly wind-down, not a mispriced asset.

The large names accelerated

Adobe, the $105bn maker of Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat and the presumed first casualty of generative design tools, grew revenue 12.7% year on year last quarter to $6.62bn. That is the fifth consecutive quarter of acceleration, from 10.5%. Gross margin was 89.2% and operating margin 33.8%. The company raised full-year revenue guidance to $20.5-20.6bn and disclosed artificial-intelligence-first annual recurring revenue above $500m, more than triple a year ago, with its Firefly image-generation product approaching $300m.

Adobe trades at 15.1x trailing and 10.8x forward earnings, against a forward multiple that spent most of the past decade between 25x and 40x. Free cash flow yield is 10.1%. The stock bottomed at $193.41 on 25 June and has risen 36.5% since, including a 14.1% session on 28 July after a CLSA upgrade on a day the technology sector fell.

Figma, the browser-based collaborative design tool that went public last year, grew 48.2% to $370.1m, its third straight quarter of acceleration, with net dollar retention of 136% and full-year guidance raised by $40m. The cost of that growth is visible: GAAP operating income was minus $117.3m, against plus $2.1m a year earlier, and the stock fell after hours on the expense line despite beating estimates. At 10.65x forward gross profit it is valued at roughly 2.4x Adobe on the same measure, and holders of about 54.1% of Class A stock see their lock-up end on 31 August.

Chegg, which sold homework-answer subscriptions to students, is the one name where the substitution story is undisputed: revenue fell 50.7% to $51.8m and third-quarter guidance is $43-44m. Even so it produced $9.1m of adjusted EBITDA and $6.4m of free cash flow, and holds $38.5m of net cash against an $88m market value while pivoting to a job-search and interview-coaching product launching this quarter.

Where the AI evidence actually sits

The clearest management statement linking generative AI to lost volume came from Getty, which said search engines prioritizing AI-generated answers hurt iStock's new-customer acquisition. Subscription retention fell to 88.4% from 93.4%. That is real, and it is happening at the cheap, self-serve end of image licensing, not in professional creative suites. One analyst arguing the market overestimates the threat noted in August that there is still no material impact from AI-powered design competitors.

One technical note, because the averages mislead. Over the past month Adobe rose 14.5% and Figma 8.6% while Getty fell 56.3% and Shutterstock 31.0%. Remove each company's two worst sessions and three of the five are higher. This was not a slow bleed; it was three dated accidents.

The setup

Where it stands — Getty and Shutterstock broke on a failed merger and a balance sheet, while Adobe and Figma both posted accelerating growth. Would confirm — Adobe's next quarter holding revenue growth above 12% with artificial-intelligence recurring revenue above $500m. Would invalidate — Adobe reporting Creative Cloud subscription growth below high single digits, or Figma guiding below 35%. Watch next — Figma's lock-up on about 54.1% of Class A shares expires 31 August; Getty's financing review is open-ended. Valuation — Adobe at 15.1x trailing and 10.8x forward earnings, against a forward multiple historically between 25x and 40x.