Who Owns Acer?

Stan Shih, his wife Carolyn Yeh, and five partners founded Multitech in Taipei in 1976 with NT$1 million. The company began as a distributor and developer of microprocessor applications, producing early home computers and video game machines before moving into IBM-compatible PCs in the 1980s.

In 1987, the company adopted the Acer name, taken from a Latin root meaning sharp, keen, and spirited. Through the 1990s Acer grew into one of the world's top five PC makers, driven by aggressive international expansion and a decentralized model that gave regional operations significant autonomy.

The late 1990s and early 2000s brought a difficult restructuring. Acer split its manufacturing arm, which became Wistron Corporation, and later spun off its channel and brand businesses. A further separation created BenQ as an independent company in 2001. These moves left Acer as a focused brand and marketing company while contract manufacturers handled production.

Acer's biggest acquisition era followed. In 2007 it purchased Gateway, an American PC brand, for $710 million, a deal that also brought eMachines and blocked a rival's takeover attempt. Packard Bell joined through a Gateway-linked transaction in 2008. Those deals briefly made Acer the world's second-largest PC vendor behind Hewlett-Packard.

The 2010s were turbulent. The collapse of netbook demand and rising competition from Lenovo pushed Acer into losses, including a record NT$20.1 billion loss in 2013 that prompted Stan Shih's brief return. The company then restructured around commercial PCs, gaming, and diversification. The Predator gaming line, launched in 2015 and expanded through the late 2010s, became a meaningful profit driver.

Under Jason Chen, Acer pursued what it calls a "multiple business engines" strategy, listing more than a dozen subsidiaries on Taiwanese exchanges by 2025. Fiscal 2025 brought consolidated revenue of NT$275.63 billion, up 4.1 percent, with net income of NT$3.78 billion. Growth accelerated in 2026: third quarter revenue reached NT$91.82 billion, up 25.1 percent year over year, and net income hit a five-year quarterly high of NT$2.13 billion. Non-PC businesses now contribute more than a third of group revenue.