{"id":675789,"date":"2026-03-23T10:36:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T10:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/675789\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T10:36:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T10:36:16","slug":"ai-startup-upstage-in-talks-to-buy-10000-amd-chips-in-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/675789\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Startup Upstage in Talks to Buy 10,000 AMD Chips in Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Bloomberg) — Korean AI startup Upstage is in discussions with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. to buy 10,000 of its latest AI accelerators as part of an effort to bring large-scale compute into the country.<\/p>\n

Upstage Chief Executive Officer Sung Kim said he discussed the procurement of AMD\u2019s MI355 accelerators when he met with the US chipmaker\u2019s CEO Lisa Su in Seoul last week. \u201cWe have a lot of Nvidia chips in Korea, but we want to diversify to other chips, including AMD\u2019s,\u201d Kim told Bloomberg Television on Monday.<\/p>\n

Most Read from Bloomberg<\/p>\n

\"South South Korean AI startup Upstage says it\u2019s in talks with its investor, AMD, for the potential purchase of 10,000 AI chips. Upstage CEO Sung Kim discusses his recent meeting with AMD chief Lisa Su in Seoul, as well as his company\u2019s edge in competing in South Korea\u2019s AI \u2018squid game\u2019. He speaks with Minmin Low at the Milken Institute\u2019s \u201cGlobal Investors\u2019 Symposium\u201d in Hong Kong.Source: Bloomberg <\/p>\n

Upstage is one of four teams competing in a state-backed race to select Korea\u2019s best national AI foundation models. The tournament, dubbed the \u201cAI Squid Game\u201d in a nod to the popular Netflix survival drama, is part of the country\u2019s ambition to become one of the world\u2019s top AI powerhouses.<\/p>\n

The teams\u2019 AI foundation models face evaluation and elimination every six months by a panel of judges overseen by the Ministry of Science and ICT. Korea is set to select two finalists by early next year. The winners receive a greater number of Nvidia Corp.\u2019s graphics processing units.<\/p>\n

Upstage is currently preparing a large language model with about 200 billion parameters for the upcoming round in the summer, Kim said. The startup\u2019s edge lies in building high-performance models with relatively lower costs by combining scale with efficiency \u2014 an approach aimed at countering low-priced competitors from China, he added.<\/p>\n

Kim also said he\u2019s targeting countries like Vietnam and the UAE with sovereign AI systems that can be deployed within their own borders.<\/p>\n

–With assistance from Naman Tandon.<\/p>\n

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek<\/p>\n

\u00a92026 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) — Korean AI startup Upstage is in discussions with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. to buy 10,000 of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":675790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21],"tags":[691,738,3638,49360,97852,15243,284901,158,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-675789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-bloomberg","tag-bloomberg-television","tag-lisa-su","tag-south-korea","tag-sung-kim","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116278053181848567","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}