Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian, LLP represented Giphy in the transaction.

Facebook announced it will acquire Giphy, the web-based animated gif search engine and platform provider, Facebook confirmed today, in a deal worth around $400 million, according to a report by Axios. Facebook said it isn’t disclosing terms of the deal.

Giphy has grown to be a central source for shareable, high-engagement content, and its animated response gifs are available across Facebook’s platforms, as well as through other social apps and services on the web.

Giphy provides built-in search and sticker functions for Facebook’s Instagram, and it will continue to operate in that capacity, becoming a part of the Instagram team. Giphy will also be available to Facebook’s other apps through existing and additional integrations. 

Giphy was founded in 2013, and was originally simply a search engine for gifs. The website’s first major product expansion was an extension that allowed sharing via Facebook, introduced later in its founding year, and it quickly added Twitter as a second integration.

The Gunderson Dettmer team was led by Colman Lynch (Picture) and Andrew Luh and included Steven Baglio, Katie Gardner, Jeffrey Goldman, Emily Lieberman, Aliya Sanders, Alexa Haertel, Laurel Fedder, Jace Clegg, Skylar Polansky, Matthew Smallcomb,  Brent Duddie, John Maciejewski and Adam Broza.

Steven Baglio - Gunderson Dettmer
Jace Clegg - Gunderson Dettmer
Brent Duddie - Gunderson Dettmer
Laurel Fedder - Gunderson Dettmer
Katherine Gardner - Gunderson Dettmer
Jeffrey Goldman - Gunderson Dettmer
Alexa Haertel - Gunderson Dettmer
Emily Lieberman - Gunderson Dettmer
Andrew Luh - Gunderson Dettmer
Colman Lynch - Gunderson Dettmer
John Maciejewski - Gunderson Dettmer
Skylar Polansky - Gunderson Dettmer
Aliya Sanders - Gunderson Dettmer
Matthew Smallcomb - Gunderson Dettmer

Gunderson Dettmer

GIPHY