Jonathan Oringer, the founder of Shutterstock Inc., became a billionaire today as shares of the world’s largest stock photo and video marketplace rose to a record.

Oringer, 39, owns about 55 percent of Shutterstock, which has about 28 million licensed photos, illustrations and videos available for sale on its website. His 18.5 million shares, which he controls through closely held investment company Pixel Holdings Inc., are valued at $1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

“I’ve never been very flashy or high-profile,” Oringer said in an interview at his 34th floor office in New York’s financial district last month. “I’ve always stayed under the radar.”

Shutterstock has more than tripled since selling shares in an initial public offering last October. Oringer is the first billionaire to be created in Silicon Alley, a collection of technology startups in New York, according to Andre Sequin, an analyst at RBC Capital Market.

Oringer’s wealth surge comes amid a bull market for acquisitions of New York technology companies. Stratasys Ltd., an Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based maker of printers that can create three-dimensional objects, agreed to buy Brooklyn-based MakerBot Industries LLC for $403 million last week.

In May, Yahoo! Inc. bought New York-based blogging network Tumblr Inc. for $1.1 billion.

Shutterstock shares were up 4.1 percent to $55.78 as of today’s close in New York.

750,000 Customers

Oringer founded Shutterstock in 2003 with 30,000 of his own pictures.

“I shot images of everything I could find over the course of a year,” said Oringer. “I would go all over the world and take pictures. In a day I could easily take thousands.”

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