Be Inc., now defunct, was founded in 1991 by Jean-Louis Gassée and SteveSakoman, both formerly from Apple. The system was originally designed to run on the BeBox, a custom-built computer system that Be Inc. created using DSP chips, and then PowerPC machines, until finally in 1998 the OS came to the Intel x86 platform.

Since March, 2000, the OS has been available for free in the form of BeOS R5 Personal Edition. Be Inc. also released the source code to the Tracker and the Deskbar components, both vital parts of the operating system. Tracker would be considered the file manager and Deskbar is the "taskbar". In late 2001, the technology assets and intellectual property of Be were acquired by PalmSource.

The original website of Be Inc. was www.be.com, but has sense been divested into here, which contains merely press releases, and financial, corporate information for current stockholders.

Further details about the history of Be Inc. and the BeOS can be found on the BeHistory wikipage.