Pixar (), also referred to as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California that is a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Lucasfilm computer division, before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986, with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became the majority shareholder. Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney 's largest single shareholder at the time. Pixar is best known for CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, Pixar's own implementation of the industry -standard RenderMan image -rendering application programming interface, used to generate high-quality images.
Pixar has produced nineteen feature films, beginning with Toy Story (1995), which was the first-ever computer -animated feature film, and its most recent being Coco ( 2017 ). All 19 of its films have debuted with CinemaScore ratings of at least an "A−," indicating positive receptions with audiences. The studio has also produced several short films. As of July 2017, its feature films have earned approximately $11 billion at the worldwide box office, with an average worldwide gross of $634 million per film. Finding Nemo (2003), along with its sequel Finding Dory ( 2016 ), as well as Toy Story 3 (2010) are among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, with the lattermost film being the third all- time highest-grossing animated film with a gross of $1.063 billion.
