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AMD has announced two strategic collaborations with South Korean technology firms as the chipmaker moves to expand its footprint in the country’s sovereign AI infrastructure market.
The deals see AMD deepen its relationships with cloud provider Naver Cloud and AI lab Upstage. Both partnerships centre on deploying AMD’s GPU and CPU hardware to support Korea’s national-scale AI ambitions.
Naver Cloud To Deploy Next-Gen AMD Silicon
Under the first agreement, Naver Cloud – a subsidiary of Naver Corporation – plans to expand its use of AMD EPYC processors, including the upcoming 6th-Gen EPYC “Venice” chip. The cloud provider will also receive early access to AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs to support its cloud and production environments.
The two companies will work together to optimise Naver Cloud’s AI services and software stacks on AMD platforms and AMD ROCm software. They also plan to collaborate on research and development initiatives aimed at enabling new AI services for Naver customers.
Naver Cloud has been providing IT infrastructure and platform services since 1999. Its parent company, Naver Corporation, is recognised as the world’s third company to develop a hyperscale large language model (LLM).
AMD Chair and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, framed the partnership around the concept of sovereign AI infrastructure.
“Sovereign AI infrastructure plays a critical role in accelerating how nations build and deploy advanced AI,” Dr. Su remarked. “Our expanded collaboration with Naver Cloud brings together AMD’s AI compute platforms and open software ecosystem with Naver’s cloud and AI capabilities to enable scalable infrastructure and accelerate the next generation of AI in Korea.”
Naver CEO, Soo Yeon Choi, pointed to the need for open and scalable systems.
“Naver Cloud is focused on building scalable and open AI infrastructure to support the rapid growth of AI innovation,” Choi stated. “Through our collaboration with AMD, we will leverage high-performance AMD compute platforms to enhance our AI and cloud services and deliver new capabilities to customers and developers.”
Upstage To Deploy Instinct MI355 GPUs
The second collaboration sees AMD expand its existing relationship with Upstage, a South Korean AI lab focused on developing Artificial General Intelligence.
The announcement followed a meeting in Seoul between Upstage CEO, Sung Kim, and Dr. Su, where the two discussed a range of collaboration opportunities to drive AI innovation across the region.
Under the expanded agreement, Upstage will immediately begin deploying AMD Instinct MI355 GPUs as part of a multi-phase roadmap over the next year. The deployment will support the development and scaling of Upstage’s large language models and document processing engines, which are designed to transform enterprise workflows and support sovereign AI initiatives.
The work includes contributing to the development of a sovereign AI model as part of Korea’s government-led Proprietary AI Foundation Model project.
Sung Kim, described AMD as a key enabler for the company’s plans.
“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 explained. “Pairing that with domestic infrastructure gives us the foundation to make Korea a genuinely competitive force in global AI.”
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Dr. Su highlighted Upstage’s role in the Korean AI landscape.
“Upstage is at the forefront of AI innovation in Korea, building advanced language models and AI engines that serve enterprises, governments and regulated industries,” she noted. “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.”
Sovereign AI Push Underpins Both Deals
The twin announcements reflect AMD’s broader push into sovereign AI infrastructure – the idea that nations should have domestic control over the compute platforms underpinning their AI capabilities. Both deals are designed to give Korean organisations greater control over data, performance and scalability when building and deploying AI services.
For AMD, the partnerships also represent an opportunity to expand the adoption of its ROCm open software ecosystem, which competes with Nvidia’s CUDA platform. The ROCm stack will underpin development work at both Naver Cloud and Upstage.
The collaborations come at a time when demand for AI compute capacity continues to grow across the Asia-Pacific region, with governments and enterprises seeking to build out domestic AI infrastructure rather than relying solely on overseas providers.
Last Updated on March 19, 2026 by Nick Ross
