Netflix Animation Studios just made a major move by joining the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron, reinforcing the momentum behind open-source software in professional animation production.
The announcement came today through Blender Foundation’s new CEO Francesco Siddi, who described the move as “a significant acknowledgement of Blender becoming more embedded in high-end animation studios’ workflows“. He continued “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“.
This marks another milestone for Blender’s growing presence in major studio pipelines.
A strategic investment in open source
Here’s the thing: Blender has been the scrappy underdog of 3D software for years. Free, open-source, powerful, but always fighting for legitimacy in an industry dominated by expensive proprietary tools like Maya and 3ds Max. Netflix Animation’s decision adds serious weight to that conversation.
Darin Grant, SVP Global Technology at Netflix Animation Studios, emphasized their commitment: “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“.
The financial support goes directly toward Blender core development, specifically targeting improvements for media and entertainment workflows. Translation: the tools individual artists and small teams use are getting better because one of the biggest players in streaming animation decided to invest in the ecosystem rather than just use the software.
Netflix already knows Blender works
This isn’t Netflix dipping its toes in unfamiliar waters. Back in 2018, the studio distributed Next Gen, an animated film created almost entirely in Blender by Tangent Animation. Netflix paid $30 million for worldwide rights to that project, proving Blender could handle feature-length production at scale.
The studio has also utilized Blender for projects like Love, Death & Robots, where episodes such as “The Witness” and “How Zeke Got Religion” incorporated the software into their production workflows.
What makes this partnership crucial is timing. Blender has been on a tear lately, with Epic Games, AMD, Apple, Google, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, and NVIDIA all contributing to the Development Fund. Studios like Ubisoft Animation, which joined as a Corporate Gold Member back in 2019, and anime powerhouse Khara already switched to Blender as their primary tool.
Netflix Animation joining as Corporate Patron validates what many artists already knew: Blender isn’t the future, it’s the present.
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