Who owns the Commodore? The retro PC brand still exists, but a lot has changed

Once a home computer giant, Commodore is now a niche brand, led by a YouTuber. So how did we go from the very popular Commodore 64 in the 80s, to a classic gaming experience with the Amiga and now to a flip phone? Well, to say it’s simple would be a lie.

Commodore was founded in 1976 by Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould. A year later, it launched the PET and followed up with the VIC-20, which was one of the first to reach one million units sold. In 1982, it launched the Commodore 64, which became a powerhouse among personal computer users. While the Commodore 64 was America’s favorite personal computer for part of the 1980s, the 1985 technological leap with the Amiga 1000 gained enormous popularity throughout Europe. By 1996, the Amiga was now niche, as the PC market completely dominated the computing space and home consoles were much cheaper and easier to use.

With the company going bankrupt, this is where it starts to get a little complicated. Originally, a German company called ESCOM, backed by Asian-based companies, acquired virtually everything in 1995. ESCOM reportedly attempted to revive the Commodore Amiga, in partnership with one of the Asian companies, Tianjin Family. In 1996, ESCOM itself went bankrupt and sold to Dell-alternative Gateway. The cow-themed PC maker got everything except the trademarks and the “C=Commodore” name, which ended up being owned by a Netherlands-based company, Tulip Computers.

During this period, the Amiga operating system was still licensed to Village Tronic Marketing GmbH. Gateway took legal action to ensure the sales stopped, but it was found that no documents supported Gateway’s argument. Ultimately, the company was forced to halt sales due to a payment dispute, rather than a complex lawsuit. Between 1997 and 2005, three different Amiga-branded companies emerged under Gateway’s watch.

South Dakota was Gateway’s main Amiga branch, but was brought back into the company. It was planned to develop the next two versions of AmigaOS, 4 and 5, but never released anything. Gateway closed it in 1999 and sold everything to Washington-based Amiga Inc.. It was more of a licensee than anything else, and Delaware was a renamed KMOS, Inc.. Even though the trademarks and rights changed, Gateway still held the patents. In 2007, when it was sold to Acer, the Taiwanese company took ownership.

Before this, the main regular news for the Commodore brand was legal disputes over the state of AmigaOS or resurrections. In 2001, a company called Hyperion was hired to develop AmigaOS 4. In 2007, the company was sued for unpaid royalties by Cloanto-owned Amiga Corporation. Hyperion has just settled the various legal issues at the time of writing, today August 4, 2026. In 2010, Commodore USA was launched, releasing hardware, such as the 64x. These were poorly priced and never sold enough, ending their short run in 2013.

Before the latest iteration, Retro Games produced the C64 Mini and C64 Maxi, as well as the A500 and A1200 Mini, based on Amiga systems. These were licensed by Amiga Corporation (Cloanto). Cloanto also produces Amiga Forever and C64 Forever, emulation packages. There was also AmigaOne, built on newer PowerPC processors, designed to work with Hyperion’s AmigaOS 4.

Starting today, Commodore is back. In 2025, a YouTuber called Christian Simpson launched Commodore International. The return of individuals from the original company and the focus on bringing the brand back under “two pillars,” nostalgia and the future, have already gained momentum.

Its first product, the C64 Ultimate, uses an FPGA processor to (put simply) emulate the original hardware, rather than using software. The move has been well received and the company has already taken legal action by suing an Italian company over its name, which it says was “inappropriately granted” to it. He now plans to launch a phone, the Callback, which blocks the use of social networks. Online reactions were divisive and a price cut was announced shortly after its initial price.

Commodore and the Amiga brand that came from it form a tangled web, and that only scratches the surface of some of the weirdness of the years that followed. If this were fiction, it would be criticized for being confusing.