AI startup Upstage announced on the 16th that it has secured Series B funding worth 100 billion KRW. This is about three times the size of its Series A funding, which closed at 31.6 billion KRW in 2021.
New investors in this round include ▲SK Networks ▲KT ▲Korea Development Bank ▲Shinhan Venture Investment ▲Hana Ventures ▲Mirae Asset Venture Investment ▲Industrial Bank of Korea, among others.
Existing investors such as ▲SBVA (formerly SoftBank Ventures Asia) ▲Primer Saz? ▲Company K Partners ▲Premier Partners also participated in follow-up investments.
Upstage has secured a cumulative investment of approximately 140 billion KRW from seed funding through Series A and B rounds.
With this investment, Upstage will accelerate its efforts to target the global generative AI market. Using its U.S. subsidiary established at the end of February as a base, the company plans to expand connections with global enterprise companies and focus on discovering demand for building enterprise-specific large language models (LLMs). To expand the SOLA ecosystem, it will enhance open-source projects such as data preprocessing and language model evaluation platforms, and introduce various events including global hackathons targeting AI developers worldwide.
Kim Seong-hoon, CEO of Upstage, said, "Despite the harsh investment environment, we secured the largest investment in our history, confirming expectations as a leading generative AI company representing Korea. Through this funding, we aim to become a company recognized for achievements on the global stage, including the U.S., Japan, and Southeast Asia, while continuously advancing SOLA to become the world's best language model."
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