South Korean Ai Innovator Upstage Eyes Expansion In The Us And Japan

Founded by nan erstwhile AI improvement lead of Naver Corp, nan startup intends to heighten mundane business operations successful nan US and Japan pinch its AI models.

South Korean AI startup Upstage is ramping up world description successful nan US and Japan, positioning its full-stack AI level to service endeavor clients. With a attraction connected boosting productivity done proprietary technologies, nan AI patient is trying to replicate its home occurrence successful 2 of nan world’s astir precocious AI markets.

Co-founded successful 2020 by Sung Kim, erstwhile AI improvement lead astatine Naver, nan startup announced its world description strategy, aimed astatine helping countries build “sovereign AI” models based connected their business productivity-focused AI technologies, reported Yonhap News Agency.

In April past year, Upstage raised 100 cardinal won ($72 million) from investors including SK Networks and KT Corp to substance its description . Kim said nan backing would thief accelerate nan improvement of purpose-trained LLMs and fortify nan company’s world presence.

Upstage’s strategy is built astir its ain AI technologies, for illustration nan OCR “DP” exertion and nan large connection model “Solar.” Kim pointed retired that these innovations are cardinal to their extremity of utilizing AI to boost productivity crossed industries.

The institution believes its power complete nan full AI stack sets it apart. The latest Solar Pro model, pinch 22 cardinal parameters, has shown important improvements successful cardinal benchmarks. Upstage plans to present a multimodal AI exemplary successful June that will merge its DP exertion and Solar LLM, on pinch a caller conclusion AI model.

Their latest connection model, Solar Pro 1.3, claims to person nan “highest benchmark performance” among Korean AI, and they’re promising moreover much musculus pinch nan 33-billion-parameter “Solar Pro 1.5,” expected to get successful June 2025.

In nan US, Upstage plans to leverage its expertise successful archive parsing, particularly wrong industries for illustration insurance, wherever it has successfully deployed solutions for Korean insurers specified arsenic Samsung Life Insurance.

Upstage’s DP exertion tin process documents astatine astir 0.6 seconds per page, translating to 100 pages successful nether a minute.

This expertise to quickly person unstructured documents into system information is particularly applicable for US sectors specified arsenic legal, healthcare, and finance, which routinely grip ample volumes of text. The system output supports downstream AI applications for illustration summarization, mobility answering, and intelligent hunt capabilities progressively sought by document-heavy enterprises.

As portion of its world maturation strategy, Upstage has besides been progressive successful a task to create a Thai-language-specific LLM.

Syn-ergy successful Japan

The company, which counts South Korean firms specified arsenic Samsung Card and Hanwha Life among its clients, is focusing connected Japan’s extended document-driven endeavor market. To make inroads, nan institution is moving connected a Japanese-specific connection exemplary pinch section partners. It has precocious appointed Hiroyuki Matsushita, who has held elder roles astatine Panasonic and AWS, arsenic caput of its Japanese operations.

A cardinal offering from nan institution for nan Japanese marketplace is “Syn,” a compact connection exemplary co-developed pinch nan Japanese chatbot startup Karakuri. Designed specifically for sectors for illustration finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and ineligible services, Syn intends to heighten operational ratio for Japanese companies.  

Full-stack AI

Upstage is pursuing a full-stack attack to AI by processing and managing its halfway technologies in-house. Its proprietary ecosystem spans nan full AI take journey—from information ingestion to exemplary deployment—anchored by its Document Parse (DP) motor and Solar ample connection model, which are designed to activity successful tandem to reside circumstantial endeavor needs.

By building these foundational devices internally, Upstage intends to connection much integrated, customizable solutions, pinch nan added use of faster loop and seamless strategy integration. To support broader adoption, nan institution is besides organizing developer hackathons successful cardinal regions specified arsenic nan US, alongside its ongoing R&D efforts. In June 2025, Upstage plans to rotation retired a multimodal AI exemplary that combines its DP motor and Solar LLM to process some system documents and unstructured text. The motorboat is portion of its broader push to present scalable AI solutions tailored for endeavor environments.