This paper reports a wideband inductorless automatic gain control (AGC) amplifier for wireline applications. To realize a dB-linear AGC range, a pseudo-folded Gilbert cell driven by a single-branch negative exponential generator (NEG) is proposed as the core variable-gain amplifier. The NEG features a composite of dual Taylor series to extend the AGC approximation range without sacrificing the precision. Fabricated in 65-nm CMOS, the AGC amplifier occupies a tiny die area of 0.045 mm and consumes 28 mW at 1.2 V. Measured over a dB-linear gain range of 40 dB, < ± 1 dB gain error is achieved and the 3-dB bandwidth stays roughly constant at 7 GHz. For the closed-loop AGC measurement, the input dynamic range is 40 dB (10 mV to 1 V) for a BER <10 under a 2 - 1 PRBS data at 10 Gb/s. The achieved figure-of-merit (FOM) of 2.8 pJ/bit compares favorably with state-of-the-art.