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Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire

Explore episode Aug 10, 2026
Business
Steve Jobs: Timing the Pixar IPO One Week After Toy Story

Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Aug 10, 2026 Business

Steve Jobs knew if Toy Story succeeded, Disney would try to renegotiate the Pixar deal from a position of power. The only way Pixar could negotiate as an equal was to have capital. So he timed the IPO for one week after Toy Story's opening. It was the largest IPO of 1995, bigger than Netscape. Jobs' 78% stake was worth $1.2 billion on day one. The Toy Story IPO — not Apple — is how Steve Jobs became a billionaire.

3 min

Where this was said

Toy Story, IPO & Eisner Conflict (1995)

At 2:06:00 · chapter starts 2:03:11

The Toy Story story reels famously crashed at a December 1993 Disney screening — Katzenberg hated it, the characters were too mean — and Pixar had two to three weeks to rebuild from scratch or lose the production funding entirely. The rebuilt version was good enough. Over 1994, the film took shape. By 1995, Steve Jobs had concluded that if Toy Story succeeded, Eisner would understand that Pixar had just become Disney's greatest nightmare — a genuine animation competitor — and would move to lock them up. The solution: go public the week after Toy Story opens. It worked. Toy Story grossed nearly $400 million — the highest-grossing film of 1995, period — and on November 29th, one week after opening, Pixar closed its IPO day at a $1.5 billion market cap. Jobs' 78% stake was worth approximately $1.2 billion. The Toy Story IPO, not Apple, made Steve Jobs a billionaire. The subsequent five-picture renegotiation worked briefly — Disney went 50/50 on production budgets — but began to fracture over sequels (Toy Story 2 grossed $500 million), Eisner's congressional testimony attacking Apple's 'Rip. Mix. Burn.' campaign, and a leaked Eisner board memo calling the Finding Nemo reel 'a bad movie' that would give Disney negotiating leverage. In January 2004, Pixar pulled the plug on negotiations and issued a Steve-written press release: 'It's a shame that Disney won't be participating in Pixar's future successes.'

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