AMD, Upstage discuss GPU supply in Seoul as Daum acquisition by AXZ advances

AMD chief executive Lisa Su and Upstage founder Kim Sung-hoon held a private meeting in Seoul on March 19 to discuss collaboration on graphics processing unit supply.

After the meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Jongno, Kim told reporters that AMD and Upstage talked through GPU provisioning and that Upstage would receive a batch of new GPUs first.

Kim said that should Daum, the Kakao-backed portal, be acquired by AXZ, the aim would be to deploy a large amount of GPUs to support Daum’s services, and that activity would accelerate once the acquisition is completed.

He added that the overarching goal is to restore Daum’s status in Korea’s portal market and to surpass NAVER, the country’s dominant portal and search leader.

The context: Daum is the portal operated by AXZ, Kakao’s subsidiary, and has long competed with NAVER for dominance in Korea’s online ecosystem. Upstage and Kakao reportedly held January board meetings and signed MOUs related to a potential stock-swap transaction and other steps toward Daum’s acquisition; Upstage remains involved in pursuing the next steps.

For U.S. audiences, the arrangement highlights a cross-border collaboration between a major American hardware maker and a Korean AI startup aiming to boost a homegrown portal to compete with a global tech leader. The deal underscores how AI workloads and large-scale web platforms increasingly depend on advanced GPUs and robust data-center infrastructure.

The development also speaks to broader supply-chain and market dynamics in semiconductor hardware, as AI-driven services in Korea’s internet ecosystem look to scale with new generations of GPUs from providers like AMD. Any final decision on the Daum acquisition would carry implications for competition, technology strategy, and potential GPU demand in the region.