On July 24, 2006, AMD announced its acquisition of ATI Technologies for about $5.4 billion, a transaction that combined CPU and GPU technologies under a single company.

Before the deal, AMD focused on central processing units while ATI was a leading manufacturer of graphics processing units.

The acquisition gave AMD ownership of the Radeon brand and decades of GPU engineering expertise.

It enabled the development of accelerated processing units that integrate CPU and graphics cores, a design later used in console hardware.

AMD's semi‑custom APU chips have powered many PlayStation and Xbox consoles as well as handheld devices.

The merger also supported the creation of the Instinct series of accelerators, which AMD positions as competitors to NVIDIA's data‑center GPUs.

While NVIDIA continues to hold the largest share of the AI accelerator market, AMD has increased its investment in Instinct and related software ecosystems.

AMD's discrete GPU line remains a notable competitor to NVIDIA's gaming graphics cards.

Two decades after the purchase, AMD's integrated CPU‑GPU strategy continues to influence PC, console and AI markets, though the company still trails NVIDIA in overall accelerator sales.