Artlist

Artlist was bootstrapped by co-founders Itzik Elbaz, Assaf Ayalon, and Ira Belsky from 2016 until September 2020, when KKR made a $48 million minority equity investment (per CTech, 2020). The co-founders remain majority owners and both serve as co-CEOs. The company has not publicly disclosed a valuation or additional funding rounds since that KKR investment.

Artlist offers an annual subscription that grants unlimited downloads and a universal license covering virtually any project type — YouTube, commercial advertising, broadcast, and client work. The firm acquires songs and footage outright from independent artists rather than operating a royalty-split marketplace. That means a single Artlist license covers a piece of music forever, with no per-use fees, no attribution requirements, and no re-licensing if the video gets millions of views, which differs from Shutterstock's credit-based model and Epidemic Sound's platform-limited coverage.

Artlist began as a music-only catalog in 2016, added a dedicated stock-footage library in 2019, launched a sound-effects collection in 2020, and introduced customizable video templates and plugins for editing software in subsequent years. In May 2024, the firm released an AI voiceover generator with licensed voice models, marking its entry into synthetic media tools. The company now categorizes its product as a full creative-asset ecosystem spanning music, video, sound effects, templates, and AI voice generation.

No. Artlist is an operating company, not an investment firm. It deploys operating revenue and KKR's growth-equity investment into content acquisition, product development, and international market expansion. KKR's position is a direct minority stake in the operating business. Artlist does not manage third-party capital, invest in outside funds, or operate a venture-investing arm.

Artlist does not license editorial or news footage; its catalog is curated for creative and commercial use — narrative filmmaking, brand content, social media, and advertising. The firm has not entered the generative-AI image or text space, focusing its AI efforts on voiceover and editing tools that complement its existing media-asset library. It also avoids user-generated-content marketplaces, preferring to curate and directly acquire its catalog to maintain uniform licensing terms.

Artlist acquires music, footage, and sound effects outright from artists through buyout agreements, meaning it holds clear ownership of the licensed catalog. For its AI voiceover tool, the company uses voice models created with consenting voice actors under commercial agreements, not scraped public data. That architecture lets the firm provide enterprise clients with indemnified licensing, an advantage over platforms facing copyright challenges from artists and labels over unlicensed training data.

Artlist has not formed a co-investment vehicle and has not publicly partnered with the KKR portfolio beyond the direct investment. The co-founders have stated an intent to remain independent (per interviews with CTech and Calcalist), and KKR's investment was structured as a minority growth-equity stake without reported participation from other institutional investors, making Artlist a single-partner-backed company rather than a syndicated deal.