Key Highlights
- South Korean AI firm Upstage is negotiating with AMD to purchase 10,000 MI355 AI accelerators.
- Lisa Su, AMD’s CEO, held discussions with Upstage’s CEO Sung Kim during a Seoul visit last week.
- The startup seeks to reduce reliance on Nvidia, which currently controls Korea’s AI chip market.
- Upstage participates in a government-sponsored AI competition dubbed the “AI Squid Game.”
- A 200-billion-parameter AI model is under development for the upcoming summer assessment phase.
Advanced Micro Devices is negotiating a potential agreement to deliver 10,000 MI355 AI accelerators to Upstage, a South Korean artificial intelligence startup — a transaction that could represent a significant breakthrough for the semiconductor manufacturer in Asia’s rapidly expanding AI sector.
Korean AI startup Upstage is in discussions with AMD to buy 10,000 of its latest AI accelerators as part of an effort to bring large-scale compute into the country https://t.co/PmSjPo7i85
— Bloomberg (@business) March 23, 2026
Following a meeting with AMD’s CEO Lisa Su in Seoul last week, Upstage’s CEO Sung Kim acknowledged the ongoing negotiations. “Korea has an abundance of Nvidia hardware, but our strategy involves diversifying our chip portfolio, which includes exploring AMD’s offerings,” Kim stated in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday.
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., AMD
These negotiations emerge amid surging demand for AI computational resources throughout Asia, while apprehensions regarding Nvidia’s availability and cost structure motivate organizations to explore alternative solutions.
Securing a purchase order for 10,000 chips would represent far more than revenue figures for AMD. It would establish a strategic position in a marketplace currently controlled by Nvidia.
Upstage’s Quest to Diversify Beyond Nvidia
Upstage stands among four competing teams in a government-funded initiative to develop South Korea’s premier national artificial intelligence model. This competition — informally called the “AI Squid Game” referencing the popular Netflix series — operates under the supervision of South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT.
Participating teams undergo evaluations biannually, with top performers gaining allocation of additional premium Nvidia GPUs. South Korean authorities intend to designate two winning teams by early next year.
To remain competitive, Upstage is developing a large language model featuring approximately 200 billion parameters, with completion targeted for the upcoming summer assessment. Such computational demands necessitate substantial infrastructure resources.
Incorporating AMD’s processors would enable Upstage to obtain necessary capacity while mitigating reliance on a single hardware provider.
Strategic Expansion Through Hardware Diversification
Beyond the domestic competition, Upstage has established ambitions for global market penetration. The organization is pursuing opportunities in regions including the UAE and Vietnam through “sovereign AI” solutions — frameworks that operate within national boundaries to maintain data and infrastructure sovereignty.
Cost-effectiveness forms a central element of this approach. As budget-friendly AI models from Chinese developers gain worldwide acceptance, Upstage aims to provide superior performance at competitive pricing. Deploying a combination of AMD and Nvidia components could facilitate achieving this equilibrium.
Should negotiations conclude successfully, this arrangement would provide a meaningful demonstration of the MI355’s capabilities in a rigorous, high-pressure operational setting.
AMD shares declined approximately 1.92% on Sunday. The consensus rating from Wall Street analysts for AMD currently stands at Moderate Buy, derived from 21 Buy recommendations and 8 Hold ratings issued during the previous three months. The mean price target among analysts is positioned at $284.96, suggesting potential upside of approximately 41% from present trading levels.
