Pixar Animation Studios is a CGI animation studio based in Emeryville, California. To date, the studio has earned thirteen Academy Awards, three Golden Globes, and one Grammy, among many other awards, acknowledgments and achievements. It is best known for its CGI-animated feature films which are created with PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard Renderman image-rendering API used to generate high-quality images. Pixar is now seen as the most influential studio in animation and is known for its high quality stories.

It was founded in 1979 as a division of Lucasfilm before it was bought by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 through an all-stock transaction worth US$7.4 billion.