“People first, products and profit will follow.”
— AMD Founder Jerry Sanders on our early guiding philosophy

• 1969: AMD incorporates with $100,000
• 1969: The company moves to a new headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA
• 1969: First good die emerges from Fab 1: the Am9300, a 4-bit MSI shift register
• 1970: First proprietary product introduces, the Am2501
• 1972: AMD goes public in September
• 1973: First overseas manufacturing base in Penang, Malaysia, in volume production

On May 1, 1969, Jerry Sanders and seven friends founded Advanced Micro Devices in the living room of one of the co-founders.

From his experience as an engineer and former worldwide marketing director at Fairchild Semiconductor, Jerry Sanders knew many electronic-equipment manufacturers personally. To him, they were more than monolithic companies — they were real people working hard to get ahead in the highly challenging technology marketplace. And they were going to need some help.

True to the unique philosophy with which they started, AMD’s founders realized that customers were going to need a steady supply of the highest quality building blocks in order to succeed. To help meet customer needs as rapidly as possible, AMD began retooling existing products for greater speed and efficiency. At the same time, we set a precedent for superior quality by testing all AMD products at our own expense, according to stringent military (MIL-STD-883) standards — even if they were destined for the simplest of devices.

Our customers responded quickly. By the end of the fifth year, AMD boasted nearly 1,500 employees making more than 200 different products — many of them proprietary — that brought in nearly $26.5 million in annual sales.