Naver Corporation signs 'AI infrastructure' partnership with AMD as Lisa Su visits headquarters

[The Financial News] Lisa Su, who is visiting Korea, met directly with Naver Corporation CEO Choi Soo-yeon on the morning of the 18th at NAVER 1784, the company’s second office building in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province. Naver Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) announced that they signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that day for "expanding the artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem and cooperating on next-generation infrastructure," and that they will pursue broad-based collaboration.
Under the agreement, the two companies plan to build an ecosystem in which AI technologies are organically connected across diverse infrastructure environments, while steadily enhancing technological flexibility.
First, the companies will strengthen technical cooperation to create a high-performance graphics processing unit (GPU) computing environment optimized for Naver Corporation’s large language model (LLM) "HyperCLOVA X." Through this, they intend to jointly advance infrastructure technologies that can operate AI models in a stable and reliable manner.
In particular, Naver Corporation plans to serve as a key partner that implements and scales AMD’s next-generation infrastructure in real service environments, leveraging its own full-stack AI capabilities.
In addition, Naver Corporation and AMD intend to provide AI computing resources to academic researchers and promote joint research projects. By doing so, they aim to support the creation of a wide range of AI research outcomes based on diverse infrastructure environments.
Industry observers say Lisa Su’s visit suggests that AMD is seeking to strengthen semiconductor supply cooperation with Naver Corporation, one of its major graphics processing unit (GPU) customers in Korea, in an effort to challenge the Nvidia Corporation-centered market structure.
Naver Corporation is expanding the large-scale infrastructure needed to operate its own AI models. If AMD joins Nvidia Corporation as a core partner supporting this infrastructure, Naver Corporation will be able to diversify its supply chain.
Naver Corporation CEO Choi Soo-yeon said, "Collaboration with AMD will be a meaningful opportunity to secure Naver’s technological diversity and strengthen the competitiveness of our AI infrastructure," adding, "The two companies will continue to expand the use of the AMD platform across NAVER Cloud and our AI services, and will keep working together to realize next-generation technology stacks and services."
Lisa Su, AMD CEO, stated, "Naver Corporation, with its world-class AI capabilities and cloud platform, is the optimal partner to implement AMD’s next-generation AI GPU technology in an innovative way," and added, "I look forward to the two companies working together to build an open AI ecosystem that researchers, enterprises, and developers around the world can trust."
Meanwhile, Lisa Su is also scheduled to visit Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.’s Pyeongtaek campus in the afternoon to hold talks with semiconductor business executives, including Jun Young-hyun, CEO and head of the Device Solutions Division.
wongood@fnnews.com Reporter Joo Won-gyu Reporter