[Independent AI Announcement] Upstage: "Specializing in Korean Language and Culture... We Will Create the Most Authentically Korean AI"

Solar-Open-100B Unveiled; Real-Time Demonstration On Site
"Ready for Real-World Deployment... Performance and Efficiency Verified Simultaneously"

"We will create the most authentically Korean AI that understands not only Korean culture but also the subtle nuances of the Korean language."

Sunghoon Kim, CEO of Upstage, made this statement as he unveiled the independent artificial intelligence (AI) model "Solar-Open-100B" at the first announcement event for the Ministry of Science and ICT's "Independent AI Foundation Model" project, held on the 30th at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. His intention is to develop an independent AI foundation model that accurately understands the context and culture of the Korean language.

Sunghoon Kim, CEO of Upstage, is presenting at the first announcement event of the Ministry of Science and ICT's 'Independent AI Foundation Model' project held on the 30th at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Screenshot from the National IT Industry Promotion Agency's YouTube broadcast

Among the five elite teams that presented at the event, Upstage was the only team composed entirely of a startup. CEO Kim emphasized, "I founded Upstage five years ago, and we are striving to create AI that truly benefits everyone."

The Solar-Open-100B model unveiled by Upstage on this day contains 100 billion parameters. With such a large number of parameters, it is specialized for high-performance inference. CEO Kim explained, "This is not just at the experimental stage; we have raised the level of completion so that it can be deployed in real services and work environments," adding, "We focused on verifying both performance and efficiency."

CEO Kim highlighted Korean language comprehension as a key competitive edge of Solar-Open-100B. He said, "Our goal was not simply to create an AI that is good at Korean, but one that understands context, emotion, and nuance," emphasizing the model's ability to distinguish between formal and informal speech, adapt expressions according to different situations, and respond to questions requiring step-by-step reasoning.

As an example, the lyrics of the song "To Mother" by the singer group g.o.d were presented. When the lyrics are provided and the AI chatbot is asked, "Why does the mother dislike Jjajangmyeon?" Solar responds in detail, reflecting Korean sentiment, whereas global models fail to capture this nuance, according to CEO Kim.

On this day, CEO Kim was the only presenter to demonstrate the developed AI model live in real time. The demonstration included real-time showcases of functions such as a chatbot, AI search, deep research, and slide generation, all based on Solar-Open-100B.

The startups forming the consortium will use Solar-Open-100B in real-world applications to verify its performance. Day1 Company is preparing a nationwide hackathon utilizing the Solar-Open-100B model. In addition, startups from various fields-including Law&Company (legal), VUNO (medical), MakinaRocks (defense), VUNO (medical), and Flitto (translation and interpretation)-will use this model.

Plans for the next model were also revealed. Next year, the model's parameter size will be expanded to 200B (200 billion), and support will be added for three languages: Korean, English, and Japanese. For the ultimate goal of universality and generalization, the company plans to further expand the model to 300B (300 billion) parameters and broaden the training data. CEO Kim stated, "Upstage will not stop at 100B-we will develop 200B and 300B models," adding, "We will also continue to create multimodal models."

CEO Kim concluded his presentation by saying, "We have a single goal: together with many consortium partners, we aim to help build a global top-three AI powerhouse with the Solar model, capable of competing with Google and OpenAI."