Upstage met with Madison Huang, senior director of Omniverse robotics at Nvidia and the eldest daughter of Chief Executive Jensen Huang, to discuss ways to work together.
Kim Sung-hoon, chief executive of Upstage, met Huang recently at Nvidia's headquarters in California, industry sources said on Sept. 14. Huang invited Kim to the headquarters after learning he had already planned a trip to the United States.
The two companies discussed possible cooperation at the meeting. "Nvidia asked what it could do to help Upstage, which is strong in large language models," Kim said. "We discussed collaboration, and Nvidia said it would review it positively."
Upstage recently passed the second round of evaluation in the government's project to build a homegrown artificial intelligence foundation model, and is now focused on improving the model's performance. Ahead of the third evaluation, the company plans to upgrade its practical-use models so that the public can feel the benefits, while also pushing into overseas markets. Industry watchers believe the talks with Nvidia were tied to those plans.
Beyond Upstage, Park Sung-hyun, chief executive of AI chip startup Rebellions, also met recently with Jensen Huang. After the meeting became known, speculation emerged in the market that Nvidia might acquire Rebellions. Rebellions said it was the first time Park had met Huang, adding that it was reluctant to disclose the purpose of the meeting.
Industry officials agreed that Nvidia is deepening its cooperation with Korean startups, because participation by related companies is essential as the U.S. chipmaker builds and expands an AI ecosystem around its graphics processing units. Korean startups, for their part, can secure a stable supply of Nvidia GPUs and tap the company's global network to expand their overseas businesses. Attention is focused in particular on a possible Rebellions-Nvidia tie-up, given industry expectations that the neural processing unit Rebellions is developing would be used alongside GPUs rather than replacing them.
"Upstage is raising pre-IPO investment and Rebellions is pursuing a listing, so the market is keenly interested in what these meetings with Nvidia will lead to," an industry official said. "Nvidia has AI model development and digital twin technology as well as GPUs, so there are considerable points of contact for cooperation with Korean startups."
