Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su met with executives from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and South Korean AI startup Upstage on Thursday to discuss strengthening AMD's artificial intelligence collaborations in the region. Lisa Su, who began a two-day visit to South Korea on Wednesday, met with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.'s co-CEO overseeing the mobile business, Roh Tae-moon, at the company's headquarters in Seoul. Upon entering the building, Lisa Su told reporters, "There are many topics to discuss," but did not reveal further details. "We will have a good discussion," she added. Industry insiders indicated that Lisa Su is expected to continue consultations with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. on business cooperation, with a focus on the AI ecosystem encompassing personal computers and tablets. Prior to the meeting with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Lisa Su met with Upstage's head, Sung Kim. The two sides explored broader cooperation to drive AI innovation. AMD and Upstage have been strategic partners since AMD participated in Upstage's 62 billion won (approximately $41.3 million) Series B transitional investment round last year. Under the expanded cooperation agreement, Upstage will deploy AMD's Instinct MI355 accelerators over the next year according to a phased roadmap, utilizing the GPUs to enhance its large language models and document processing engine. This deployment will also support the development of a sovereign AI model, which is part of a government-led AI foundation model project in South Korea. Upstage has advanced to the second phase of this project alongside SK Telecom and LG AI Research. AMD and Upstage stated that their collaboration aims to strengthen the domestic South Korean AI ecosystem and diversify the country's sovereign AI infrastructure. Upstage noted that the cooperation, supported by AMD's GPUs, is expected to play a key role in advancing its large language model projects and building South Korea's sovereign AI models. Sung Kim said, "Integrating AMD's GPUs with domestic Korean infrastructure will lay the groundwork for Korea to become a genuine competitive force in the global AI arena." Lisa Su stated that she chose Upstage as a partner because the startup is a leader in AI innovation within South Korea. She said, "This collaboration combines AMD Instinct GPUs and ROCm open-source software with Upstage's expertise, aiming to enhance Korea's sovereign AI capabilities and deliver the performance, efficiency, and open ecosystem required to accelerate AI innovation." The previous day, Lisa Su met with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Chairman Lee Jae-yong. This meeting followed Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.'s announcement on Wednesday of signing an agreement with AMD. Under the agreement, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. will supply its latest high-bandwidth memory chips for AMD's next-generation AI accelerators. According to a memorandum of understanding, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has been designated as the preferred supplier of HBM4 for AMD's latest data-center GPU for AI, the Instinct MI455X.
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