Netflix Becomes Maximum-Level Patron Of Blender’s Development Fund

Netflix Animation Studios is the latest Corporate Patron of the Blender Development Fund, pledging significant financial support to the open-source 3D creation platform. Joining at the maximum membership level for companies, which means Netflix is committing at least €240,000 per year.

Blender’s open-source software has grown from an open-source, grassroots tool into a professional-grade CG suite used across animation and VFX. Once scoffed at by animation elitists, the free software’s ever-expanding set of tools now fuel some of the highest-profile films and series made anywhere in the world, including the Oscar-nominated I Lost My Body, last year’s animated feature Oscar-winner Flow, and 2023’s box office blockbuster Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which employed the popular Grease Pencil tool to help establish the film’s painterly, 2D look, as seen in the video below.

In a release announcing Netflix’s commitment, Blender CEO Francesco Siddi wrote:

This membership is a significant acknowledgement of Blender becoming more embedded in high-end animation studios’ workflows. I deeply appreciate this strategic initiative from Netflix Animation Studios as an investment in a diverse, public, and open-source friendly ecosystem of creative tools that will benefit the global community of content creators.

Darin Grant, SVP global technology at Netflix Animation Studios, added:

Netflix Animation Studios’ corporate membership with Blender reflects our ongoing support for open-source software in the animation community. We are proud to be the first major animation studio to support Blender’s continued development and growing adoption by current and future generations of animation professionals.

This collaboration marks a milestone in the relationship between open-source software and large-scale animation production, perhaps even accelerating Blender’s adoption across the global studio ecosystem.