The Companies AI Was Supposed to Kill Are Now Feeding It

When ChatGPT launched, Wall Street didn’t wait for the autopsy. FiverrFVRR

and ShutterstockSSTK

were immediately filed under “AI casualties,” having built businesses on the exact things AI could now generate for free. Years later, both companies are finding a place in the new world — and it’s not the one anyone predicted.

• Down 95% in five years,FVRR
  now forecasts a 12% revenue decline as simpler gigs migrate to AI — taking 250 corporate jobs and a veteran CFO with them.
• SSTK
  shed 83% during the same period as AI threatened to make stock photography redundant — forcing a pivot from content licensing into AI training data.

The new playbook: With Shutterstock targeting $250M in AI licensing by 2027, survival belongs to those who fuel, rather than fight AI. Fiverr is playing the complementary angle, positioning itself as the upmarket layer that AI can’t replace, and the numbers back it up. Transactions above $1K climbed 22.8%, coming as AI created 640K jobs between 2023 and 2025, per LinkedIn. Every industrial revolution destroys some work and always creates more. The obituary, it turns out, was premature.