{"id":37,"date":"2012-11-27T22:05:21","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T21:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/?page_id=37"},"modified":"2026-01-09T15:43:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T14:43:33","slug":"institute","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.blender.org\/about\/institute\/","title":{"rendered":"Blender Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Blender Institute formally acts as the working company<\/em> of Blender Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To keep the Foundation lean and a safe place for Blender, almost all activities of the Foundation are being conducted by the Blender Institute. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These operational and development expenses are covered by the income from donations and the Development Fund. Next to that, the Blender Store generates additional income by selling goodies and the tickets for the annual Blender Conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more about the way how the Blender organization facilitates the Blender open source community on this code.blender.org blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Goals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The primary goals of Blender Institute is to execute the operational part of the Blender Foundation’s mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such operations involve office rent, daily administration, general management, HR services, Blender Store<\/a>, Blender Conference<\/a> organization, event participation (SIGGRAPH, Annecy, etc), operational support for blender.org, managing Development Fund<\/a> grants, software research projects, workshops, meetings, and so on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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History<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 2007 Blender Foundation chairman Ton Roosendaal established the “Blender Institute” following the overwhelming success of “Elephants Dream”, the world’s first open movie project<\/a>. This became the permanent office and studio to more efficiently organize the Blender Foundation goals, to bring core Blender developers and top Blender artists together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2006, Blender has realized several open projects<\/a>. This creative work is possible thanks to the Blender Studio<\/a> (formerly Blender Cloud) platform – for content (short films, training) and in the past by providing cloud services (production and render management).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, the Blender Institute’s studio activities have been split off into a separate company; Blender Studio<\/a>. Here new short films are developed and activities continue to develop a complete free and open source pipeline for independent production of feature animation films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blender currently employs over 50 people<\/a>, both full-time and freelancers, on-site and remotely. The building in Amsterdam houses offices for administration, developers, a store, a render farm and test lab, space for workshops\/sprints and Blender Studio where artists work on animation film productions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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