Commodore Is Back: A YouTuber Now Owns the Retro PC Brand
Who Owns Commodore? The Retro PC Brand Still Exists, but a Lot Has Changed
Commodore, once a home computer giant, is now a niche brand run by YouTuber Christian Simpson. The company, founded in 1976, went bankrupt in 1994, and its assets were sold piecemeal, leading to a tangled web of ownership. After failed revivals and legal battles, Simpson launched Commodore International in 2025, releasing the FPGA-based C64 Ultimate and planning a social media-blocking phone called the Callback.
If this were fiction, it'd be lambasted for how confusing it is.
- abetusk
The picture of the teenager holding a piece of paper in front of a commodore is of Regina King [0].
[0] https://www.fineartstorehouse.com/michael-ochs-archives/regi...
- Taikhoom10
I mean, I wish Commodore was still around, a lot of nostalgia, but what do you expect, when your only differentiation is price, and you do not build a structure around your business that creates customer lock-in in some way, it becomes hard to create sustainable profits and stick around.
With Windows and Intel locking down the enterprise, you really had to create some kind of premium brand like Apple did, not focus on the low end.
- ChrisArchitect
Article is dated yesterday but says,
> Hyperion has only just settled the various legal issues as of writing, today, August 4, 2026.
Discussion on main source then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49175868