Seoul: Lisa Su, the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc., engaged in discussions with officials from Samsung Electronics Co. and AI startup Upstage as part of her two-day visit to South Korea. This visit underscores AMD's efforts to enhance its artificial intelligence (AI) partnerships in the region.
According to Yonhap News Agency, Su held a meeting with Roh Tae-moon, co-CEO of Samsung Electronics, focusing on potential business cooperation within the AI ecosystem, particularly in relation to PCs and tablet devices. Although Su did not disclose specific details, she expressed optimism about the discussions.
Prior to the Samsung meeting, Su met with Sung Kim, head of Upstage. The two leaders explored opportunities for broader collaboration to foster AI innovation. AMD and Upstage have been partners since AMD's participation in Upstage's Series B bridge investment last year, amounting to 62 billion won (US$41.3 million).
As part of their expanded partnership, Upstage plans to integrate AMD's Instinct MI355 accelerators through a multiphase roadmap. This deployment aims to enhance Upstage's large language models (LLMs) and document processing engines, aligning with South Korea's government-led AI foundation model project. Upstage, SK Telecom Co., and LG AI Research have advanced to the project's second round.
The collaboration between AMD and Upstage seeks to fortify South Korea's domestic AI ecosystem while diversifying its sovereign AI infrastructure. Upstage emphasized the significance of AMD's GPU technology in advancing its LLMs and developing the country's sovereign AI model, aiming to position South Korea as a competitive force in global AI.
AMD CEO Su highlighted Upstage's leadership in AI innovation as a key factor in choosing them as a partner. She noted that combining AMD Instinct GPUs and ROCm open software with Upstage's expertise will advance Korea's sovereign AI capabilities.
During her visit, Su also met with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong to discuss strengthening ties in the AI chip industry. This meeting followed Samsung's announcement of an agreement to supply AMD with high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips for its next-generation AI accelerators.
Under a memorandum of understanding, Samsung Electronics has been designated as a preferred supplier of HBM4 for AMD's Instinct MI455X, the latest GPU designed for AI data centers.