AMD’s $5.4 billion ATI acquisition turns 20
Twenty years ago today, AMD announced an agreement to acquire ATI Technologies. The transaction was valued at approximately $5.4 billion when it was revealed on July 24, 2006. It was completed three months later on October 25. AMD paid approximately $4.3 billion in cash and issued 58 million AMD shares. The cash portion was funded using AMD’s existing reserves and a $2.5 billion loan from Morgan Stanley.
AMD currently has a market capitalization of around $880 billion. This makes the company roughly 163 times more valuable than the total price of the ATI transaction. The acquisition price represents around 0.6% of AMD’s current market value, although market capitalization and acquisition value are different financial measurements.
ATI gave AMD a complete graphics business
ATI brought Radeon consumer graphics, FireGL professional GPUs, PC chipsets and consumer electronics technology. The company also developed custom graphics hardware for game consoles, including the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.
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The acquisition gave AMD graphics intellectual property and engineering teams alongside its existing x86 processor business. AMD announced its Fusion CPU and GPU integration plans when the transaction closed. This work eventually led to AMD’s first Accelerated Processing Units and the integrated Radeon graphics used across later desktop, mobile and console products.
ATI branding survived for four more years
AMD continued using the ATI name after completing the acquisition. The company announced in August 2010 that new graphics products would transition to AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro branding. The Radeon HD 5000 family became the final consumer generation sold under the ATI Radeon name. The Radeon HD 6800 series launched in October 2010 using AMD Radeon branding. It’s still crazy to remember that and even crazier to think it was 20 years ago.
20 years ago today, @AMD announced its acquisition of ATI Technologies, bringing together world-class processor and graphics innovation under one roof.
That combination gave AMD the enduring and unique ability to deliver high-performance CPUs and GPUs across PCs, gaming, data… pic.twitter.com/JOV6CkB5Fe
— Saša Marinković (@SasaMarinkovic) July 24, 2026
The final new ATI-branded gaming card was the Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition (included in the gallery) released on March 31, 2010. It featured 2GB of GDDR5 memory and six Mini DisplayPort connectors. The ATI FirePro V9800 arrived later in September 2010, making it the final newly launched ATI-branded GPU across AMD’s consumer and professional product lines.