[4] It was founded in 1990 by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée, who also served as the company's CEO, and was based in Menlo Park, California.

[8] Originally named Be Labs[9][10] based in San Jose,[11][12] Gassée and his team worked behind closed doors for over four years before publicly revealing their product.

Gassée originally thought the company should be called "United Technoids Inc.", but Sakoman disagreed and said he would start looking through the dictionary for a better name.

[8] By 1994 the project was nearing completion, but the sudden discontinuation of Hobbit (AT&T exited the processor business due to weak sales) forced Be to look elsewhere.

[8] In October 1995, the BeBox personal computer was released by Be,[14] with its distinctive strips of lights along the front that indicate the activity of each PowerPC CPU, and the combined analogue/digital, 37-pin GeekPort.

Due to its impressive power and showcase of multimedia applications, the BeBox received much attention at launch, especially by fans and enthusiasts of Amiga.

[16][17] The company's financial state was not very good after years of development,[8] but in April 1996 managed to secure funding from "several leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms".

[27] However the company continued to struggle with adoption, partly due to the agreements of most OEMs with Microsoft preventing the offering of BeOS.

[30] Be managed to partner with consumer electronics giant Sony which adopted BeIA for its eVilla[4] home internet appliance, unveiled at CES 2001.

[39] The suit was settled out of court in September 2003 with a US$23.25 million payout to Be, Inc.[40][41] After Palm's acquisition of Be's assets, The Register wrote that Be shouldn't be viewed as a failure:[6] "The fact that the company survived for ten years - and through such dramatic shifts: taking it from being an independent workstation manufacturer, to an alternative Macintosh software platform, through to being an alternative x86 OS, and finally to being an embedded media appliance platform - without a discernible revenue stream is a testament to its engineering prowess, practicality and foresight.

[..] For example, in its pomp Be Inc had only a sixth of the engineers of the Apple Copland project, and still managed to turn out a working operating system... and quite a good one, at that.