Upstage is a Seoul-based artificial intelligence company founded in October 2020 by a team of researchers who previously led AI efforts at companies like Naver and Kakao. The company builds enterprise-grade generative AI, anchored by two product lines: its Solar large language models and its Document AI suite for intelligent document processing.
Solar is Upstage's flagship LLM, which gained attention for topping open model leaderboards relative to its size. Its standout innovation is Depth-Up Scaling (DUS), a method of efficiently growing model depth that lets Solar achieve competitive accuracy with comparatively modest compute, translating into lower inference cost for customers. Upstage positions Solar as a practical, cost-efficient foundation model for businesses that want strong performance without the expense of the largest frontier systems.
The company's Document AI products address a concrete enterprise pain point: extracting accurate, structured information from messy real-world documents such as invoices, claims, contracts, and forms. These tools have found strong demand in document-heavy industries like finance, insurance, and healthcare, with customers including major Korean conglomerates such as Samsung and Hanwha. Upstage frames document understanding plus LLM reasoning as a combined offering for automating knowledge work.
Upstage raised a $72 million Series B in April 2024, led by a consortium that included SK Networks, KT, the Korea Development Bank, and several Korean venture firms, making it one of the most-funded Korean AI software companies. In 2025 it added a $45 million Series B bridge with participation from KDB, Amazon, and AMD to fund global expansion and enterprise GenAI deployments. With this backing, Upstage is pushing beyond Korea into the US and other markets, pairing its efficient models with industry-specific document automation to win regulated enterprise customers.
