It is owned by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and is located in Hillsboro, Oregon, part of the Portland metropolitan area.

[8] It opened two divisions: Laika Entertainment for feature films and Laika/house for commercial work, such as advertisements and music videos.

[6] The studio laid off a significant portion of its staff in 2008, when its second planned feature, Jack & Ben's Animated Adventure, was cancelled.

[1] At the end of the year, the studio laid off more staff in its computer animation department to focus exclusively on stop-motion.

[7] Their second stop-motion feature film, ParaNorman, directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler, opened on August 17, 2012.

After working on stop-motion commercials for clients such as Apple Inc., Fox Sports, ESPN and Coca-Cola,[11] Laika spun off its advertising portion in July 2014, to focus on feature film production exclusively.

Laika had considered Philip Reeve's fantasy book Goblins,[14] for a potential feature film adaptation.

[25] On April 27, 2022, a new Laika stop-motion film titled The Night Gardener was announced as being in the works, based on an original story by Ozark creator Bill Dubuque, with Travis Knight penned to direct it.

[26] On October 21, 2022, former director for the studio, Selick, openly admitted that he would consider returning to Laika; specifically to helm an adaptation of another Neil Gaiman novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

[29] In June 2024, it was announced that Laika had acquired the rights to adapt Susanna Clarke's novel Piranesi into an animated feature film, to be directed by Travis Knight.

[30] In July 2024, Laika announced their original live-action film Crumble, with Brian Duffield writing and directing.