Atlanta has made its mark on the film industry over the last few years. It has also fostered tech talent and founders who have transformed the way filmmakers get content.
Started in Decatur, Georgia in 2013, Motion Array is a marketplace for creatives to source stock audio, images, and templates for Adobe editing software. This week, the team announced it has been acquired by Artlist, an Israeli-based platform for finding royalty-free licensed music, stock video clips, and sound effects.
The deal was for $65 million, according to a statement released by Artlist. With the acquisition, Artlist will grow to have six million worldwide users and a platform with half a million stock assets.
For co-founder Tyler Williams, the acquisition was a natural next move for both companies. “The values and culture of both companies greatly aligned,” Williams told Hypepotamus. “We both value the quality of the products in our marketplaces over the quantity. Many of our competitors boast about the number of assets in their library, yet the quality is often negligible and users spend more time searching for assets of value, instead of their actual work. We’re also both big on top-notch customer support and user experience.”
“We believe that Motion Array’s rich collection presents the perfect opportunity for Artlist to move towards becoming a one-stop-shop of creative stock assets,” Ira Belsky, co-founder and co-CEO of Artlist, said in a statement. “The addition of Motion Array’s flexible tools and vast catalog, including the world’s largest Premiere Pro template catalog, will secure Artlist’s position as the leading company in the video creation industry.”
Motion Array has five team members in Atlanta and 30 workings remotely across the world. Williams said that all the team will remain employed with Motion Array/Artlist for the “foreseeable future.”
Hypepotamus first caught up with Motion Array in 2015, and the platform has expanded rapidly over the years. While adding more creative templates, it also built out SaaS offerings with feedback and collaboration tools.
The company raised $48 million earlier in 2020 from KKR and Elephant Partners, one of Motion Array’s existing investors.
