AMD Breakthrough in Asia-Pacific. Secures Order for 10,000 AI Chips From South Korea’s Upstage

TradingKey - On March 23, it was reported that South Korean AI startup Upstage is in talks with AMD ( AMD) to purchase 10,000 Instinct MI355 AI accelerator chips. This move represents both a key breakthrough for AMD in deepening its presence in the Asia-Pacific AI computing landscape and a strategic shift by South Korean tech companies to break their dependence on Nvidia as a sole supplier.

A week earlier, Upstage CEO Sung Kim met with AMD CEO Lisa Su in Seoul to discuss specific procurement details.

Sung Kim stated clearly, "The South Korean AI industry is currently heavily dependent on Nvidia chips. We hope to achieve computing diversification by introducing other suppliers such as AMD."

Upstage's large-scale computing procurement plan is directly linked to the national AI strategy promoted by the South Korean government. As one of the four teams participating in South Korea's "AI Foundation Model Selection Contest" (dubbed the "AI Squid Game" by outsiders), Upstage is facing intense competitive pressure.

Participating models must undergo reviews supervised by South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT every six months. The two eventual winning teams will be rewarded with additional Nvidia GPU resources, with the contest expected to determine the finalists in early 2027.

To prepare for a new round of reviews this summer, Upstage is accelerating its computing power reserves and plans to launch a large language model with 200 billion parameters.

Sung Kim revealed that the company's core competitiveness lies in "combining scale and efficiency," which allows it to build high-performance models at a relatively low cost. This strategy directly addresses the current cost pain point in the global AI industry—as they face low-price model competition from Chinese AI firms, South Korean and overseas AI developers are being forced to strike a balance between performance and cost.

In addition to addressing domestic competition and cost challenges, Upstage has launched an international expansion strategy, targeting markets like Vietnam and the UAE. The company plans to export sovereign AI systems that can be deployed locally, achieving the commercialization of its technology overseas.

In fact, this chip procurement is not the first collaboration between the two parties.

In 2025, AMD participated in Upstage's 62 billion won (approximately $41.3 million) Series B bridge financing, making the two companies long-standing strategic partners.

During Lisa Su's trip to South Korea, besides finalizing cooperation details with Upstage, she also engaged in multi-dimensional negotiations with Samsung Electronics. Following a meeting with Samsung Chairman Jay Y. Lee, Samsung announced it would become the preferred HBM4 memory supplier for AMD's next-generation AI accelerator, the Instinct MI455X.

Subsequently, she discussed collaboration on AI ecosystems for PCs and tablets with Samsung Mobile's Co-CEO TM Roh. This series of moves indicates that AMD is aggressively expanding its market share in the Asia-Pacific AI sector through a dual-track strategy of supply chain and customer partnerships.