Steve Jobs' NeXT was rescued by massive US intelligence contract in 1980s, WSJ reports

Steve Jobs' computer venture NeXT was kept afloat and scaled during the late 1980s thanks to a major procurement order placed by US intelligence agencies, Vesti.az reported, citing The Wall Street Journal.

According to a book by former WSJ reporter Sharon Weinberger, after Jobs departed Apple in 1985, his high-end NeXT workstations initially struggled with sluggish commercial sales due to steep pricing. The turning point arrived when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sought approximately 20,000 workstations over a 12-month timeframe. To rapidly ramp up production capacity, engineers from Sun Microsystems were brought in, enabling output to reach several thousand units per month.

The customized workstations were deployed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to process classified satellite imagery and assemble executive intelligence briefings. The massive government contract sustained NeXT until its eventual acquisition by Apple, which integrated NeXT's operating system as the foundation of macOS and paved the way for Jobs' return to lead the tech giant.