Upstage deepens partnership with AMD to power sovereign AI push

Upstage CEO Kim Sung-hoon, left, and AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su pose after a meeting in Seoul, Thursday. Courtesy of Upstage

Upstage is expanding its partnership with the U.S. chip giant AMD to accelerate next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) model development and advance Korea’s sovereign AI ecosystem.

The company announced that the two have agreed to expand their strategic collaboration following a meeting Thursday between its CEO Kim Sung-hoon and AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su in central Seoul.

During the meeting, the two heads discussed a range of collaboration opportunities to drive AI innovation across the region.

As part of this partnership, Upstage will immediately begin deploying AMD’s Instinct MI355 graphics processing unit (GPUs) supported by a multiphase road map over the next year.

The company said it plans to use the chips to develop and scale up its large language model, called Solar, and AI-powered document processing engines designed to transform enterprise workflows.

"AMD is a cornerstone of global AI computing infrastructure, and this collaboration will be instrumental in both advancing our proprietary Solar LLMs and building Korea's sovereign AI model," Kim said. "Pairing that with domestic infrastructure gives us the foundation to make Korea a genuinely competitive force in global AI."

Upstage also intends to use AMD GPUs to support national sovereign AI initiatives, including developing its AI foundation model for the ongoing government-led project.

The company is leading one of the four consortia that have advanced to the second round of the project with the Solar Open 100B model. The project will select the final two by the end of this year.

Under the expanded collaboration, Upstage and AMD aim to strengthen Korea’s domestic AI ecosystem while diversifying the nation’s sovereign AI infrastructure.

“Upstage is at the forefront of AI innovation in Korea, building advanced language models and AI engines that serve enterprises, governments and regulated industries,” the AMD CEO said.

“This collaboration brings together AMD Instinct GPUs and the ROCm open software with Upstage’s expertise to advance Korea’s sovereign AI capabilities and deliver the performance, efficiency and open ecosystem needed to accelerate AI innovation.”

Su made her first trip to Korea on Wednesday since becoming AMD chief, using the visit to shore up ties with the country’s leading tech firms and signing memorandums of understanding with Samsung Electronics, which will become the primary HBM4 supplier, and Naver, which will expand its use of AMD processors.