If you have been in the tech industry for a while, or just looked closely at your motherboard, you have probably heard of American Megatrends, better known as AMI. The company is known around the world for its development of BIOSes, which are used on the vast majority of motherboards, but because of its somewhat behind-the-scenes role in the industry, people tend to not know too much more about the company.
The Firmware Business
Over the last 30 years, AMI has been the world's leading BIOS provider. AMI stated that one of the company's first major customers in 1985 was a relatively new company known as PC Limited, which would go on to become Dell Computer Corporation in 1987. This partnership helped AMI secure its position as the leading BIOS provider.
AMI has since worked with numerous OEMs in the industry, offering businesses customizable BIOSes to fit their needs. When a new chipset is created, AMI first takes a reference motherboard and designs a BIOS fully capable of taking advantage of the features inside of the chipset. After that, more advanced features are added, such as an improved user interface or diagnostic tools. An example of one of the more useful features that can be added to the firmware is the ability to upload a backup image of the computer's HDD at the time of failure to avoid data loss.
Source: Tom's Hardware