AMD Stock Moves In on Nvidia (NVDA) Turf With Korea Chip Talks

TLDR

• AMD is in talks to sell 10,000 MI355 AI chips to South Korean startup Upstage.
• AMD CEO Lisa Su met Upstage CEO Sung Kim in Seoul last week to discuss the deal.
• Upstage wants to diversify away from Nvidia, which dominates Korea’s AI chip supply.
• Upstage is competing in a government-backed AI tournament nicknamed the “AI Squid Game.”
• The company is building a 200-billion-parameter AI model ahead of a summer evaluation round.

AMD is in talks to supply 10,000 of its MI355 AI accelerators to South Korean AI startup Upstage — a deal that could mark one of the chipmaker’s bigger wins in Asia’s booming AI market.

Upstage CEO Sung Kim confirmed the discussions after meeting AMD CEO Lisa Su in Seoul last week. “We have a lot of Nvidia chips in Korea, but we want to diversify to other chips, including AMD’s,” Kim told Bloomberg Television on Monday.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., AMD

The talks come as demand for AI computing power continues to climb across Asia, and concerns around Nvidia’s supply and pricing push companies to look at alternatives.

For AMD, landing a 10,000-chip order would be more than a sales number. It would be a foothold in a market where Nvidia currently dominates.

AMD Challenges Nvidia’s Grip in Korea

Upstage is one of four teams in a state-backed competition to build South Korea’s top national AI model. The contest — nicknamed the “AI Squid Game” after the Netflix show — is run under oversight from South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT.

Teams are evaluated every six months and the strongest performers earn access to more high-end Nvidia GPUs. South Korea plans to select two finalists by early next year.

To stay in the running, Upstage is building a large language model with around 200 billion parameters, targeting the next evaluation round this summer. That kind of workload requires serious computing infrastructure.

Tapping AMD’s chips would help Upstage secure that capacity while reducing its dependence on a single supplier.

Upstage Targets Cost-Effective AI at Scale

Beyond the competition, Upstage has its eye on international expansion. The company is targeting markets like the UAE and Vietnam with “sovereign AI” systems — models that run within a country’s borders to keep data and infrastructure local.

Efficiency is a core part of that pitch. As lower-cost AI models from China gain traction globally, Upstage is aiming to deliver high-performance results at a competitive price. A mix of AMD and Nvidia hardware could help it hit that balance.

If the deal goes through, it would represent a real test of whether AMD’s MI355 can hold its own in a demanding, high-stakes production environment.

AMD stock was down around 1.92% on Sunday. Wall Street’s consensus rating on AMD sits at Moderate Buy, based on 21 Buy and 8 Hold ratings over the past three months. The average analyst price target stands at $284.96, implying upside of roughly 41% from current levels.

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