Fatal Board · VIDEO ESSAY

The Rise and Fall of ATI: The Toronto Company That Beat NVIDIA to Every PC, Then Lost to AMD

Subscribe to the channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb0ps9eCp0y6yP1Xg4sDDFw?sub_confirmation=1 In 1985, three men and about $300,000 started a graphics chip company in a rented unit in Markham, Ontario. Within a decade, ATI Technologies was shipping more graphics chips than any company on Earth — inside Compaqs, Dells, Gateways, Packard Bells, and millions of family PCs that never carried its name on the outside. ATI built the All in Wonder, the card that let you watch TV on your computer years before anyone called that normal. It built the chip inside the Nintendo GameCube, the chip inside the Xbox 360, and the chip inside the Wii. In 2002 it released the Radeon 9700 Pro and beat NVIDIA so badly that NVIDIA's answer became the most mocked product of the decade. In 2005 it shipped unified shader architecture inside a game console — a full year before it appeared on any desktop card — the same architectural idea that underpins every GPU built today. Then, in July 2006, ATI's board agreed to sell the company to AMD for $5.4 billion. AMD borrowed most of the cash. Intel closed off ATI's chipset business. Billions in goodwill were written off. AMD's stock fell roughly 80%. In 2009, AMD sold ATI's handheld graphics division to Qualcomm for about $65 million — it became Adreno, and it now ships in billions of smartphones. On August 30, 2010, AMD retired the ATI name entirely. This is the full story of how a Canadian company beat NVIDIA into nearly every PC in America, invented the architecture the whole industry now runs on, and then lost everything in a boardroom — not to a better product, but to a decision that was cautious, defensible, and about four years too early. Sources AMD press release archive and investor relations, "AMD to Acquire ATI Technologies," July 24, 2006 — https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission EDGAR filings, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Forms 10-K and 8-K, 2006 to 2010 — https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000002488&type=10-K Ontario Securities Commission, proceedings and settlement records in the matter of ATI Technologies Inc. and related respondents — https://www.osc.ca/en/enforcement AnandTech, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro architecture and performance analysis, 2002 — https://www.anandtech.com/show/947 Qualcomm newsroom, acquisition of AMD handheld graphics and multimedia assets, January 2009 — https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases ATI Technologies Inc., Annual Report and Form 40-F filings, fiscal years 1996 through 2006 Jon Peddie Research, quarterly PC graphics chip market share reports, 1997 through 2007 The Globe and Mail, business coverage of ATI Technologies and the AMD transaction, 1993 through 2010 Tom's Hardware, comparative testing of the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra and Radeon 9700 Pro, 2003 Microsoft Xbox 360 technical documentation and Xenos GPU architecture briefings, 2005 You can contact me at: thefatalboard@proton.me This channel is made by an enthusiast who loves business and technology history — nothing more. All videos are for educational and entertainment purposes only and reflect my personal views and interpretations. I research each story carefully using publicly available sources, but errors or omissions can happen. Nothing here is professional, financial, or legal advice, and this channel is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any company mentioned.