AMI (American Megatrends International LLC, formerly American Megatrends Inc.) is an international hardware and software company, specializing in PC hardware and firmware. The company was founded in 1985 by Pat Sarma and Subramonian Shankar. It is headquartered in Building 800 at 3095 Satellite Boulevard in unincorporated Gwinnett County, Georgia, United States, near the city of Duluth, and in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The company started as a manufacturer of complete motherboards, positioning itself in the high-end segment. Its first customer was PCs Limited, later known as Dell Computer. As hardware activity moved progressively to Taiwan-based original design manufacturers, AMI continued to develop BIOS firmware for major motherboard manufacturers. The company produced BIOS software for motherboards (1986), server motherboards (1992), storage controllers (1995) and remote-management cards (1998). In 1993, AMI produced MegaRAID, a storage controller card. AMI sold its RAID assets to LSI Corporation in 2001, with only one employee from the RAID-division remaining with the AMI core team. AMI continued to focus on OEM and ODM business and technology. Its product line includes AMIBIOS (a BIOS), Aptio (a successor to AMIBIOS8 based on the UEFI standard), diagnostic software, AMI EC (embedded controller firmware), MG-Series SGPIO backplane controllers (for SATA, SAS and NVMe storage devices), driver/firmware development, and MegaRAC (BMC firmware). Founding American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) was founded in 1985 by Subramonian Shankar and Pat Sarma with funds from a previous consulting venture, Access Methods Inc. (also AMI). Access Methods was a company run by Pat Sarma and his partner. After Access Methods successfully launched the AMIBIOS, there were legal issues among the owners of the company, resulting in Sarma buying out his partners. Access Methods still owned the rights to the AMIBIOS. Sarma had already started a company called Quintessential Consultants Inc. (QCI), and later set up an equal partnership with Shankar. By this time the AMIBIOS had become established and there was a need to keep the initials AMI. The partners renamed QCI as American Megatrends Inc., with the same initials as Access Methods Inc.; the renamed company then purchased AMIBIOS from Access Methods. Shankar became the president and Sarma the executive vice-president of this company. This partnership continued until 2001, when LSI Logic purchased the RAID Division of American Megatrends; American Megatrends then purchased all shares of the company owned by Sarma, making Shankar the majority owner. Products AMIBIOS AMIBIOS (also written as AMI BIOS) is the IBM