NewTek was founded in 1985 by Tim Jenison.

Main business segment in the late '80s / early '90s was the development of Amiga video hardware and software - most famous were the first video digitizer for Amiga in 1986 as well as Video Toaster and LightWave 3D. NewTek and Tim Jenison were presented 1993 with an Emmy award for Technical Achievement for the Video Toaster.

These days the company develops and sells animation software (e.g. LightWave) and various video hardware.

Some employees (including the directors of sales, marketing, and software development, key software engineers from the Toaster team and the Vice President of NewTek) left NewTek and co-founded Play Inc.
Marty Flickinger, who worked two years for NewTek, was formerly working for Xetec Inc.