AMD chair and chief executive Lisa Su used a visit to Seoul on Wednesday to stress the company’s dependence on its South Korean memory partners, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. AMD has started shipping its MI455 accelerators and Helios systems, both of which use HBM4 memory supplied by the two Korean chipmakers.
Speaking to reporters after AMD’s Gamer Day event, Su described semiconductors as a “team sport” that demands close collaboration. She noted that AMD was the first company to put high-bandwidth memory into production, in 2015, and said its partnerships with the Korean suppliers cover several generations of the technology. According to industry officials, she held separate meetings with Jun Young-hyun, the Samsung vice chairman who runs its chip business, and Kwak Noh-jung, chief executive of SK hynix.
The trip builds on a March visit during which Su met Samsung chairman Lee Jae-yong and signed a cooperation agreement with Jun. AMD later named Samsung a preferred HBM4 supplier for the MI455X, and the two have discussed possible foundry work. Asked whether AMD would use Samsung’s contract manufacturing, Su gave no specific plans but said AMD wants a broader supply chain and continues to look at opportunities with Samsung.
Su also met Ryu Je-myung, second vice minister of science and ICT, and executives from 13 Korean AI companies, including FuriosaAI, Upstage and MangoBoost. The talks covered pairing AMD processors with Korean-designed neural processing units for AI inference, with demonstration projects in Korea that could become a model for overseas use, and bringing local firms into AMD’s open-source ROCm software platform, a rival to Nvidia’s CUDA. Su said she strongly backs an open ecosystem and called Korea an important partner. Ryu said AMD’s global reach combined with Korean technology could create new AI businesses.
Su confirmed plans to open an AI Center for Excellence in Korea by the end of the year and hire hundreds of researchers, with AMD supplying the hardware. A location has not been chosen. The company will also keep funding graduate-level AI training and is working with start-ups and universities, including a cloud infrastructure project with MangoBoost and an agreement with Seoul National University’s AI Institute. The visit followed a cooperation pact AMD and the science ministry signed in July, during President Lee Jae Myung’s trip to an AI summit in San Francisco. Su also appeared at Gamer Day with Jack Huynh, senior vice president of AMD’s computing and graphics group, where the pair met Korean gamers and showed the company’s latest gaming technology.
