Steve Jobs Got Rich From Pixar Before Apple

The Unexpected Origin of Steve Jobs' First Fortune

When you think of Steve Jobs, you likely picture the iconic iPhone or sleek MacBooks. But here is a surprising twist: Apple was not the company that made him a billionaire.

Instead, his very first billion-dollar milestone came from a small computer graphics shop he bought from Star Wars creator George Lucas back in the 1980s.

A $10 Million Bet on Computer Graphics

On February 3, 1986, Steve Jobs bought The Graphics Group, which was the computer graphics unit of Lucasfilm. He paid George Lucas $5 million for the technology and added another $5 million in startup capital, making it a $10 million deal.

Jobs renamed the operation Pixar and took roughly a 70% ownership stake. The remaining shares were distributed among Pixar's early employees.

Nearly a Decade of Losses Before the 1995 Breakout

Success did not arrive quickly. In fact, Jobs ended up sinking roughly $50 million of his personal money into Pixar to keep it afloat while the company lost money for almost ten years.

Everything changed on November 22, 1995, when Pixar released Toy Story. It made history as the world's very first fully computer-animated feature film.

Just one week later, on November 29, 1995, Pixar launched its initial public offering (IPO). The stock priced at $22 per share, making it the biggest IPO of that year.

By that point, Jobs owned over 80% of Pixar. The massive IPO pushed his net worth past $1 billion for the first time. Crucially, this happened two full years before he returned to lead Apple in 1997.

The $7.4 Billion Disney Buyout

In 2006, The Walt Disney Company acquired Pixar for $7.4 billion in an all-stock deal under CEO Bob Iger.

At the time of the sale, Jobs held about 49.65% of Pixar. The deal converted his stake into roughly 138 million Disney shares, which were worth around $4.6 billion at the time.

This trade instantly made Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder, giving him roughly a 7% stake in the media giant.

A Legacy That Keeps Generating Revenue

Disney has successfully turned Pixar's flagship story into a massive revenue platform. Since 1995, the Toy Story franchise has driven over $16 billion in revenue, including consumer merchandise, video games, and publishing.

A Fortune report from June 22, 2026, pointed out that Toy Story 5 enjoyed a huge $312 million opening weekend. That modern success traces straight back to Jobs' bold 1986 decision to buy a graphics team and wait for the long-term payoff.