Upstage has secured a supply of AMD’s latest graphics processing units (GPUs). AMD has also committed to prioritizing Korean companies for the delivery of these cutting-edge GPUs.
On Thursday morning, Upstage Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kim Seong-hoon met privately with AMD CEO Lisa Su at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul’s Jongno district.
Prior to the meeting, Kim told reporters that it needs a substantial number of chips, so they’re looking to secure high-quality chips at competitive prices.
Approximately an hour later, around 8:20 a.m., Kim and Su emerged together.
Su commented that this Korean visit has been an incredibly productive business trip. She’s had the opportunity to meet with crucial partners across the spectrum, from supply chain stakeholders to artificial intelligence (AI) users.
During their meeting, both companies agreed to utilize AMD’s Instinct MI355 GPU for developing Upstage’s proprietary large language model (LLM) Solar and its document processing AI solutions.
Upstage also plans to incorporate AMD GPUs into the government’s Sovereign AI Foundation Model project.
Kim revealed that he expressed our desire to use Nvidia and AMD products equally, as it believes GPU supply shouldn’t be monopolized by a single company. Su was quite receptive to this idea. Currently, Upstage is developing AI models using Nvidia GPU-based servers.
Kim added that since Nvidia doesn’t prioritize GPU supply to Korea, he requested that AMD provide us with their best GPUs first. Su indicated this would be feasible.
He continued that it discussed being the first to utilize AMD’s latest model, the MI355X, and subsequent releases.
The initial supply is expected to start at around 10,000 units, with plans for future expansion. Kim explained that once it finalizes the Daum acquisition, it aims to process one trillion tokens (the basic unit of AI computation) daily, requiring about 10,000 GPU units.
He elaborated that while simple searches alone would consume one trillion tokens, operating as AI agents similar to ChatGPT would require 100 times that capacity. He challenged them to calculate the necessary units for such scale.
Upstage recently agreed to acquire the portal Daum from Kakao. The company intends to leverage this portal data to enhance its proprietary LLM, Solar.
Regarding potential future investments from AMD, Kim reported that Su expressed a willingness to explore further opportunities.
AMD previously participated as an investor when Upstage raised 62 billion KRW (approximately 41 million USD) in a Series B bridge investment last year.
Kim shared that he conveyed to AMD the vision of creating a narrative where the Solar sovereign AI model runs optimally on AMD chips. Su responded enthusiastically, asking them to place the trust in her capabilities.
Following her visits to Naver and Samsung Electronics the previous day, Su is scheduled to meet with Ha Jung-woo, the presidential AI chief, and Roh Tae-moon, CEO and President of Samsung Electronics’ DX division, later today.
