AMD and Upstage Expand Strategic Alliance to Power South Korea Sovereign AI Infrastructure

AMD and Upstage have announced a significant expansion of their strategic collaboration to advance South Korea's sovereign AI capabilities. The agreement follows a high-level meeting in Seoul between AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su and Upstage CEO Sung Kim. This partnership focuses on building independent AI infrastructure that reduces reliance on global technology monopolies while fostering domestic innovation. Central to this initiative is the deployment of AMD Instinct MI355 GPUs. These advanced accelerators provide the massive compute power and memory bandwidth required for next-generation large language models. Upstage will integrate these GPUs into their multi-phase roadmap to transform enterprise workflows and document processing across the region as detailed on the AMD Newsroom. The collaboration also centers on the AMD ROCm open software ecosystem. This open-source approach allows Upstage to refine its proprietary Solar LLMs with greater flexibility and performance. By utilizing the 288GB of HBM3E memory found in the MI355 series, Upstage aims to achieve significantly higher throughput for its AI engines compared to previous generations.

Strengthening National AI Sovereignty

This partnership is a key component of South Korea's Proprietary AI Foundation Model project. Led by the Ministry of Science and ICT, this project aims to create a homegrown AI foundation model built from the ground up. Upstage is a leading contender in this initiative, utilizing its Solar models to meet rigorous national security and performance standards while ensuring cultural relevance for Korean users.

"AMD is a cornerstone of global AI computing infrastructure," stated Sung Kim, CEO of Upstage. He emphasized that pairing AMD hardware with domestic infrastructure provides the foundation to make Korea a competitive force. Dr. Lisa Su added that the collaboration brings together AMD’s high-performance hardware and Upstage’s expertise to deliver an open ecosystem for innovation.

AMD's commitment to the Korean market extends beyond this single deal. The company has also established ties with regional providers like NAVER Cloud, further cementing its role in the nation's data center ecosystem. By securing a direct pipeline for cutting-edge silicon, Upstage ensures a stable supply chain for its vision of artificial general intelligence for the enterprise.