South Korean AI startup Upstage is in talks with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to buy 10,000 MI355 AI accelerators as it looks to add more computing capacity in Korea.
CEO Sung Kim said he discussed the potential purchase with AMD CEO Lisa Su during a meeting in Seoul, and added that Upstage wants to diversify beyond Nvidia chips.
The discussions come as Upstage competes in a government-backed contest to pick Korea’s national AI foundation models, dubbed the “AI Squid Game.”
Models are assessed every six months under the Ministry of Science and ICT, with two finalists due by early next year, and winners receiving more Nvidia GPUs.
Kim said Upstage is preparing a roughly 200 billion-parameter model for the next round and is targeting Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates with in-country AI deployments.
🔗 Source: Bloomberg
Originally written by: Naomi Li Gan
Source: Tech in Asia
Published on: 23 March 2026
Link to original article: South Korea’s Upstage in talks with AMD to buy 10,000 AI chips
