Key Takeaways
Jobs paid $10 million for Lucasfilm’s graphics division in 1986 ($5M for the tech, $5M in capital) and renamed it Pixar.Pixar’s November 1995 IPO, every week after Toy Story opened, made Jobs a billionaire two years earlier than he returned to Apple.Disney’s $7.4 billion all-stock buyout in 2006 made Jobs its largest particular person shareholder, with about 7%.
Steve Jobs’ first billion-dollar payoff didn’t come from Cupertino. It began on 2/3/1986, when he purchased Lucasfilm’s laptop graphics division from George Lucas for $5 million, put in one other $5 million to fund it, and renamed the operation Pixar whereas taking roughly a 70% stake. After Toy Story hit theaters on 11/22/1995, Pixar’s 11/29/1995 IPO priced at $22 a share and pushed Jobs into billionaire territory, years earlier than his 1997 return helped remake Apple. Fortune’s 6/22/2026 have a look at Toy Story 5’s $312 million opening weekend is a reminder that Jobs’ largest early guess ultimately ended with Disney shopping for Pixar in 2006 for $7.4 billion.
A shrewd $10 million guess on laptop graphics
It’s simple, years later, to compress Steve Jobs right into a single firm. However some of the revealing chapters of his profession occurred away from Cupertino, inside a tiny computer-graphics store that most individuals didn’t but know the best way to worth. A Fortune piece printed June 22, 2026 usefully ties that arc to arduous numbers.
On February 3, 1986, Jobs purchased Lucasfilm’s laptop graphics division, The Graphics Group, from George Lucas. He paid $5 million for the expertise and put in one other $5 million as startup capital, totaling $10 million, then renamed the corporate Pixar. In that Lucasfilm deal, Jobs took roughly 70% of the brand new standalone firm, with the remaining shares going to Pixar workers.
The lengthy runway to the 1995 IPO
The guess didn’t repay shortly. Jobs finally invested roughly $50 million of his personal cash to maintain Pixar afloat because it misplaced cash for almost a decade. The turning level arrived with Toy Story, launched in theaters on November 22, 1995 because the world’s first totally computer-animated characteristic movie.
One week later, Pixar went public on November 29, 1995, in what was described as the largest IPO of that yr. The inventory was priced at $22, and with Jobs proudly owning upwards of 80% by that time, he crossed into billionaire standing for the primary time, per this November 29, 1995 IPO account. The chronology issues: Jobs didn’t return to Apple till 1997, which means Pixar, not Apple, produced his first fortune.
How Disney turned fairness into an enduring stake
In 2006, the Walt Disney Firm acquired Pixar for $7.4 billion in an all-stock deal beneath then-CEO Bob Iger. By then, Jobs held roughly 49.65% of Pixar, and the transaction transformed his stake into about 138 million Disney shares value roughly $4.6 billion on the time, making him Disney’s largest particular person shareholder with roughly a 7% stake.
Disney has stored monetizing the franchise at a scale that appears extra like platform economics than box-office trivia: because the unique 1995 launch, Toy Story has pushed $16 billion in income to Disney, together with shopper merchandise, video games, and publishing. Fortune famous Toy Story 5’s $312 million opening weekend in June 2026, a contemporary datapoint that traces straight again to Jobs’ 1986 determination to purchase a graphics division and wait.
