Pixar
Founded: 1986
Co-founder of Apple Computers Steve Jobs founded Pixar and acts as its chairman and CEO.

About the Company:
Based out of Emeryville, CA, Pixar is an award-winning animation studio famous for its computer-animated film shorts and for the feature films that it produces in conjunction with Disney, who splits costs of production and distribution by covering all distribution issues while Pixar handles production.

Recent Works:
The Incredibles (2004)
Finding Nemo (2003)
Monsters Inc. (2001)
Toy Story 2 (1999)
A Bug's Life (1998)
Toy Story (1995)

Pixar began as a subdivision of Lucasfilms, before being bought by Jobs and established as an independent studio, co-founded with Dr. Edwin E. Catmull. Believe it or not, Pixar actually began as a high-end hardware company, specializing in visual processing computers targeted to the government and medical industry. However, poor sales nearly put the company out of business, and in order to survive the animation department began producing short commercials for various clients. When this led to a multimillion dollar deal with Disney, Pixar's future in animation was established with the production of Toy Story.

Pixar has become a pioneer in the production of technology for computer graphics and animation, including their renowned Marionette and Renderman softwares.
Pixar was founded as the Graphics Group, one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm that was launched in 1979 with the hiring of Dr. Ed Catmull from the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT)[1], where he was in charge of the Computer Graphics Lab (CGL). At NYIT, the researchers pioneered many of the CG techniques that are now taken for granted and worked on an experimental film called The Works. When the group moved to Lucasfilm, the team worked on creating the precursor to RenderMan, called Motion Doctor, which allowed traditional cel animators to use computer animation with minimal training.[1]
The team began working on film sequences produced by Lucasfilm or worked collectively with Industrial Light and Magic on special effects.[1] After years of research, and key milestones in films such as the Genesis Effect in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the Stained Glass Knight in Young Sherlock Holmes,[1] the group, who counted about 45 individuals back then[2], was purchased in 1986 by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple Computer.[3] Jobs paid $5 million to George Lucas and put $5 million as capital into the company.[4][5][6] A factor contributing to Lucas' sale was an increase in cash flow difficulties following his 1983 divorce, which coincided with the sudden dropoff in revenues from Star Wars licenses following the release of Return of the Jedi and the disastrous box-office performance of Howard the Duck.[1] The newly independent company was headed by Dr. Edwin Catmull, President, and Dr. Alvy Ray Smith, Executive Vice President and Director. Jobs served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pixar.[7]

Initially, Pixar was a high-end computer hardware company whose core product was the Pixar Image Computer, a system primarily sold to government agencies and the medical community. One of the leading buyers of Pixar Image Computers was Disney Studios, which was using the device as part of their secretive CAPS project, using the machine and custom software to migrate the laborious Ink and Paint part of the 2-D animation process to a more automated and thus efficient method. The Image Computer never sold well.[8] In a bid to drive sales of the system, Pixar employee John Lasseter—who had long been creating short demonstration animations, such as Luxo Jr., to show off the device's capabilities—premiered his creations at SIGGRAPH, the computer graphics industry's largest convention, to great fanfare.[8]
As poor sales of Pixar's computers threatened to put the company out of business, Lasseter's animation department began producing computer-animated commercials for outside companies. Early successes included campaigns for Tropicana, Listerine, and LifeSavers.[9] During this period, Pixar continued its relationship with Walt Disney Feature Animation, a studio whose corporate parent would ultimately become its most important partner. In 1991, after substantial layoffs in the company's computer department, Pixar made a $26 million deal with Disney to produce three computer-animated feature films, the first of which was Toy Story. Despite this, the company was costing Jobs so much money that he considered selling it. Only after confirming that Disney would distribute Toy Story for the 1995 holiday season did he decide to give it another chance.[10] The film went on to gross more than $350 million worldwide.

Disney
Pixar and Disney had disagreements after the production of Toy Story 2. Originally intended as a straight-to-video release (and thus not part of Pixar's three-picture deal), the film was eventually upgraded to a theatrical release during production. Pixar demanded that the film then be counted toward the three-picture agreement, but Disney refused.[11] Pixar's first five feature films have collectively grossed more than $2.5 billion, equivalent to the highest per-film average gross in the industry. Though profitable for both, Pixar later complained that the arrangement was not equitable. Pixar was responsible for creation and production, while Disney handled marketing and distribution. Profits and production costs were split 50-50, but Disney exclusively owned all story and sequel rights and also collected a distribution fee. The lack of story and sequel rights was perhaps the most onerous aspect to Pixar and set the stage for a contentious relationship.[12]