DreamWorks Animation has designated Lenovo its preferred compute services, workstation, and solutions provider. By bringing together devices, data center infrastructure, and services into a seamless Lenovo ecosystem, DreamWorks has the compute power to scale with the ever-growing demands of its artistic and technical teams — an essential advantage in an increasingly dynamic landscape.
The two partners said in a joint statement that Lenovo’s strategic services and solutions have already delivered a quantifiable impact to DreamWorks’ production pipelines and business infrastructure.
DreamWorks saw a 20% performance increase was achieved using Lenovo Neptune liquid cooling, improving render speeds and enabling faster iteration cycles.
There was also a 25% performance increase of animation programs running on the ThinkStation P620s compared to previous workstations, leading to faster loading times and an overall better artist experience.
With 98% utilisation in its data centre and 300 million compute hours for The Wild Robot, Lenovo infrastructure scaled to meet unprecedented creative demands.
“This deepens our collaboration and gives DreamWorks the flexibility and operational scale we need to fuel our business ambitions and deliver world-class filmmaking,” said Kate Swanborg, SVP of technology communications and strategic alliances at DreamWorks Animation.
Ken Wong, Lenovo EVP and president of the firm’s solutions and services group, said the expansion of their partnership highlights the vital role of advanced, scalable technologies and services in powering complex creative workflows and meeting the demands of modern content production.
During its most technically demanding productions, DreamWorks relied on Lenovo’s high-performance computing (HPC) solution to accelerate workflows and scale rendering. With Lenovo’s infrastructure, artists could explore, refine, and bring complex digital environments to life with greater speed and precision.
Lenovo’s professional services have also enabled DreamWorks to scale quickly and smoothly. A HPC deployment expected to take a week was completed in just 1.5 days.
From custom hardware integration to white-glove service and proactive support, every deployment is built for seamless execution and immediate production-readiness.
This robust technology and services foundation now supports a bold new slate of DreamWorks films, including The Bad Guys 2 (August 2025) and the newly announced Forgotten Island (September 2026).
It will also play a central role in the creation of Shrek 5 (December 2026)—further demonstrating Lenovo’s impact on some of the studio’s most iconic and technically ambitious productions.
“This extension of the Lenovo partnership is a key component of our technology strategy,” said Bill Ballew, CTO for DreamWorks Animation.
“The Lenovo hardware solutions are incredibly powerful, and we are now looking forward to engaging with their AI teams to identify solutions that will optimise our compute infrastructure even further,” said Ballew.
