Alias Systems Corporation was founded by Stephen Bingham, Nigel McGrath, Susan McKenna, and David Springer in 1983.

[1] In 1984, while sitting in a Detroit restaurant during the SIGGRAPH conference, the founders decided to name the company Alias because its only revenue came from Springer's work on an anti-aliasing program for Silicon Graphics, Inc.[1] In 1985, at SIGGRAPH the company released Alias 1, which used cardinal splines instead of polygon meshes with straight lines.

[2] PowerAnimator was used to produce Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), which won the 1992 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

[3] In June 2004, Silicon Graphics sold Alias to the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Accel-KKR, a technology-focused private equity investment firm, for US$57.1 million.

[8] Alias' best-known product, the 3D modeling and animation package Maya, was delivered in 1998 and has released a major upgrade every 9–12 months.

Sketch provided the basis of the core non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) editing tools, which in turn was based on a product that the company bought, and its key developer went to work for Alias.