Upstage

What Upstage does

Upstage is a South Korea-headquartered AI company founded in 2020 that builds a vertically integrated enterprise AI platform combining proprietary large language models with specialized document processing engines and an agentic orchestration layer. Its core technology stack centers on the Solar LLM family — Solar Pro 3 (flagship reasoning model, 52% IFBench improvement and 30% Arena Hard v2 gain over Solar Pro 2), Solar Pro 2 (31B parameters, dual-mode reasoning), Solar Mini (compact sub-30B model that topped Hugging Face's Open LLM Leaderboard in December 2023), and Syn Pro (a Japanese LLM co-developed with Karakuri, ranked #1 locally trained under 32B parameters in Japan) — all built using Upstage's proprietary Depth Up-Scaling (DUS) architecture. The document intelligence layer includes Document Parse (OCR and layout analysis at TEDS 93.48, 0.6 sec/page), Information Extract (agentic, schema-agnostic structured data extraction), and Document Classify, while the orchestration layer is delivered through Upstage Studio (an agentic document workflow platform launched from San Jose in April 2026 with SSO/RBAC, audit logs, and SOC 2 Type 1 / ISO 27001/27701 / HIPAA compliance) and AI Space (conversational retrieval over long documents).

Upstage serves regulated, document-heavy enterprise buyers — primarily insurance carriers, brokers, and TPAs, with growing reach into healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, legal, logistics, and government/media — and has disclosed outcome metrics including 95%+ OCR accuracy at Hanwha Life, 80%+ reduction in review time at Amwins, 45,000 documents/hour at Samsung Fire & Marine, and a 30x translation throughput increase at Chosun Ilbo. Revenue mechanics span four streams: usage-based API consumption (e.g., Document Parse at $0.01/page), marketplace software subscriptions on AWS and Azure, on-premise and private cloud deployment licenses for sovereignty-conscious buyers, and tiered enterprise commitments (Commitment Tiers launched November 2025). Distribution combines direct enterprise field sales, a self-serve developer Console/Playground, cloud marketplace listings, and partner channels (SK Networks, Samsung SDS, HP Japan, Karakuri, FriendliAI, Iric Corporation). The company became Korea's first generative AI unicorn in April 2026 after a $120M Series C tranche (~$270M cumulative), received a 560 billion-won ($380.6M) direct investment from the Korea National Growth Fund in May 2026, completed acquisitions of Kakao's Daum portal operator AXZ and workplace AI startup Timely in 2026, and is pursuing a KOSPI IPO with UBS advising at a potential valuation of up to 5 trillion won (~$3.3B).

Name

Upstage

Legal name

Upstage Co., Ltd. (주식회사 업스테이지)

Website

https://upstage.ai

Company type

Private

Founded year

2020

Operating status

Ipo

Headcount range

101–250 employees

Short description

Upstage is a South Korean AI company building proprietary Solar LLMs and document processing engines (Document Parse, Information Extract, Upstage Studio) that automate underwriting, claims, KYC, and other document-heavy workflows for enterprise customers in insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, and financial services.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Enterprise AI Platform

NAICS

Software Publishers (513210), Software Publishers (5132), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (51821)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Computer Programming Services (7371)

akta.pro primary industry

Document Creation & Office Suites (BPAMAMAD)

akta.pro secondary industries

Cloud Encoding & Transcoding Services (SaaS/PaaS) (MPAHAHAC), Enterprise/Creator Video Hosting & OTT SaaS Platforms (MPACAAAL)

Keywords

• Large language models
• Document AI
• Enterprise AI platform
• OCR solutions
• AI workflow automation

Headquarters

HQ city

Yongin

HQ country

South Korea

HQ region

Asia

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. API consumption (usage-based): Pay-per-page / per-token API consumption via the Upstage Console for Solar LLM, Document Parse, Information Extract, Document Classify, and AI Space; Document Parse priced at $0.01/page. Free Playground and tiered free credits used to drive developer adoption and land-and-expand into paid usage.
2. Marketplace software subscriptions: Recurring / consumption-based software sales through AWS Marketplace (Document Parse listed at $17/hour or $3k/month) and Azure Marketplace (Information Extract), packaged as managed SaaS contracts.
3. On-premise / private deployment licenses: On-prem and private cloud deployment of Solar models, Syn Pro, and Document Intelligence behind customer firewalls for data sovereignty; typically sold as enterprise licenses with associated support.
4. Commitment tiers (enterprise contracts): Upstage announced 'Commitment Tiers' (Nov 2025) — flexible, predictable enterprise pricing for ongoing LLM and document AI consumption, plus outcome-driven engagements such as the Tricura Insurance Group underwriting case with reported ~95% extraction accuracy and per-application time savings of ~30 minutes.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion5 records

Distribution channels6 records

Core offering

Upstage develops proprietary Solar large language models (Solar Pro 3, Solar Pro 2, Solar Mini) and specialized document processing engines (Document Parse, Information Extract, Document Classify) that convert complex PDFs, scans, and forms into structured, LLM-readable data. These building blocks feed into the Upstage Studio agentic workflow platform and AI Space conversational retrieval product, sold via APIs, AWS/Azure Marketplaces, and on-premise deployments to insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, and financial services enterprises.

Product overview

Upstage offers a unified enterprise AI platform built around its proprietary Solar LLM family and complementary document intelligence engines. The generative intelligence layer includes Solar Pro 3 (flagship reasoning LLM), Solar Pro 2, Solar Mini (compact efficient LLM), and Syn Pro (Japanese LLM co-developed with Karakuri). The document intelligence layer includes Document Parse (OCR/layout/chart recognition) and Information Extract (agentic schema-agnostic data extraction). These building blocks feed into intelligent spaces such as Upstage Studio (agentic document workflow platform) and AI Space (conversational knowledge retrieval). The platform is delivered via REST API, AWS Marketplace, Azure Marketplace, and on-premise deployments, and is targeted at insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, and financial services.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Solar: Enterprise-grade language model family including Solar Pro 3, Solar Pro 2, Solar Mini, optimized for speed and groundedness
• Syn Pro
• Document Parse
• Information Extract
• Upstage Studio
• AI Space

Products and services

• Solar Pro 3 Upstage's flagship large language model optimized for production-scale reasoning and instruction following, with strong Korean/English fluency and a stable API for enterprise integrations.
• Solar Pro 2 31B-parameter flagship Solar LLM with dual operational modes for fast response and complex reasoning, available via Upstage Console, AWS Marketplace, and on-premise.
• Solar Mini Compact, lightweight LLM built via the proprietary Depth Up-Scaling (DUS) technique on a Mistral 7B base, offering GPT-3.5-comparable quality with greater efficiency, released under Apache 2.0.
• Solar Pro An earlier-generation Solar flagship LLM delivering the performance of a 70B+ parameter model while running efficiently on a single GPU.
• Syn Pro Japanese LLM co-developed with Karakuri Inc., ranked Japan's #1 locally trained LLM under 32B parameters and global top 20 on the Nejumi Leaderboard, designed for on-prem and private cloud deployment behind customer firewalls.
• Upstage Document Parse Enterprise OCR and document digitization engine that converts PDFs, scans, emails, spreadsheets, and slides into LLM-readable HTML and Markdown at 0.6 seconds per page with TEDS 93.48 accuracy, including chart recognition, complex table handling, and element coordinates.
• Upstage Information Extract Agentic, schema-agnostic information extraction API that pulls structured key-value data from invoices, claims, contracts, and 500+ page documents without templates or retraining, capturing checkbox states and rebuilding multi-page tables.
• Document Classify Universal, semantic document classification capability that complements Document Parse and Information Extract for routing and triage of any document type.
• Upstage Studio Agentic AI workflow platform where teams design, deploy, and operate AI agents for document-heavy processes (claims, underwriting, contracts, invoices) with Agent Editor, Quick Tune auto-optimization, REST API/MCP/Webhook integrations, SSO/RBAC, audit logs, and SOC 2 Type 1 / ISO 27001 / HIPAA compliance.
• AI Space Conversational AI space that lets users ask plain-language questions across large document sets and receive precise answers with cited sources, used by MGAs and brokers to query 150-page insurance policies.

Quantifiable outcome

• Over 95% OCR / extraction accuracy on life insurance claims (Hanwha Life) and underwriting intake (Tricura)
• +6 more outcomes

Named customers22 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration8 records

AI capability12 records

Feature7 records

Partnerships

15 partnerships are on record, tiered strategic insurance vertical partner in japan, strategic fintech vertical partner in korea, sovereign ai consortium member, cross-border frontier-model dialogue, core — chip supplier and sovereign ai co-development partner, k-sovereign ai full stack partner, quantization technology partner for sovereign ai, robotics ai validation partner inside upstage consortium, flagship m&a counterparty — korea's first major ai-led acquisition of a legacy platform, education-to-employment channel partner, flagship japan co-development partner, japan on-prem hardware partner (solarbox), enterprise ai distribution partner, inference infrastructure partner and flagship — preferred cloud provider with minority investment.

• Iric Corporationstrategic insurance vertical partner in japanStrategic or Co-development Partner · 16 June 2026Iric Corporation and Upstage AI announced a strategic partnership in Tokyo to develop Generative AI solutions tailored for the insurance industry, aiming to improve efficiency and compliance in insurance operations through AI-driven automation and data processing.
• Findastrategic fintech vertical partner in koreaStrategic or Co-development Partner · 10 June 2026Finda has signed a memorandum of understanding with AI startup Upstage to jointly develop an agentic AI platform tailored for financial services. Upstage will develop finance-specific AI models based on Solar LLM while Finda provides domain data, compliance expertise, and user acceptance testing support; partnership may expand into South Korea's sovereign AI foundation model initiative.
• Alfred (formerly Hyeum)sovereign ai consortium memberStrategic or Co-development Partner · 28 May 2026Alfred (formerly tax AI company Hyeum, rebranding into agentic AI) participated in Upstage's sovereign AI consortium and plans to launch agentic AI services for SMB operations (tax filing, customer management, document issuance) in the second half of 2026.
• Mistral AIcross-border frontier-model dialogueStrategic or Co-development Partner · 3 April 2026Upstage met with French AI unicorn Mistral AI during a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron's delegation. The meeting focused on AI model development and potential collaboration, with discussions centered on creating 'AI for all.'
• AMDcore — chip supplier and sovereign ai co-development partnerStrategic or Co-development Partner · 18 March 2026AMD and Upstage expanded their strategic collaboration to develop Korea's sovereign AI infrastructure. Upstage will deploy AMD Instinct MI355 GPUs (up to 10,000 units under negotiation) and support the development of AI models, contributing to Korea's government-led proprietary AI project. AMD CEO Lisa Su emphasized the importance of the partnership during her visit to Korea.
• Orchestrate (Orchestra)k-sovereign ai full stack partnerStrategic or Co-development Partner · 17 March 2026Orchestrate and Upstage signed an MOU to build a 'K-Sovereign AI Full Stack Service' in Seoul, focused on an integrated AI environment spanning models and infrastructure. The collaboration aims to develop a hardware-independent environment using various computing resources, including domestic NPUs, to enhance stability and cost efficiency amid GPU supply issues.
• Nota AIquantization technology partner for sovereign aiTechnology or Integration · 4 March 2026Nota AI developed proprietary 'Nota AI MoE Quantization' that compresses Upstage's Solar 100B LLM by 72.8% (from 191.2GB to 51.9GB) while maintaining comparable performance (Perplexity 6.81 vs 6.06 baseline). Development was part of South Korea's Sovereign AI Foundation Model Project and enables on-device AI in robotics and automotive applications.
• RLWRLDrobotics ai validation partner inside upstage consortiumStrategic or Co-development Partner · 24 February 2026RLWRLD (physical AI startup founded 2024) joined the Upstage-led consortium as part of South Korea's Sovereign AI Foundation Model initiative, tasked with defining technical requirements for vision-language models in robot control and designing verification scenarios for industrial deployment.
• Kakao (AXZ / Daum acquisition)flagship m&a counterparty — korea's first major ai-led acquisition of a legacy platformStrategic or Co-development Partner · 29 January 2026Kakao and Upstage completed a share-swap agreement transferring Kakao's full ownership of AXZ (the operator of Daum) to Upstage, while Kakao acquires a minority stake in Upstage. Upstage gains access to Daum's 30-year archive of Korean-language content (Cafe, Mail) to train Solar LLM and to advance Korea's Sovereign AI initiative. AXZ had sales in the 300 billion won range; deal is Korea's first major AI-led acquisition of a legacy internet platform.
• Day1 Company (FastCampus)education-to-employment channel partnerStrategic or Co-development Partner · 23 January 2026Upstage and Day1 Company (operator of FastCampus) signed an MOU to jointly train AI-specialized professionals for immediate industry deployment in Korea. Day1 develops demand-driven training programs, conducts job analyses, offers scholarships, and connects graduates to internships; Upstage provides GPU computing infrastructure, datasets, evaluation systems, and technical mentoring.
• Karakuri Inc.flagship japan co-development partnerStrategic or Co-development Partner · 23 October 2025Upstage co-developed Syn Pro, Japan's top-performing locally trained LLM under 32B parameters (ranked in global Top 20 on the Nejumi Leaderboard), with Karakuri Inc., a leader in Japanese AI development. Karakuri brings Japanese linguistic, cultural and business-logic expertise; Syn Pro is deployable on-prem, in private cloud, or on customer GPUs.
• HP Japanjapan on-prem hardware partner (solarbox)OEM/ Whitelabel/ Licensing Partner · 23 October 2025Upstage and HP Japan collaborate on SolarBox, a joint solution that brings Syn / Syn Pro's trusted AI performance into secure, on-premise environments, enabling Japanese enterprises and public institutions to deploy generative AI with full data control.
• Samsung SDSenterprise ai distribution partnerTechnology or Integration · 11 September 2025Samsung SDS held REAL Summit 2025 at COEX in Seoul. Upstage presented its adoption experience of Samsung SDS's AI solutions including FabriX generative AI platform and Brity Copilot; key partners SAP Enterprise Cloud Services and Dell Technologies also showcased collaboration.
• FriendliAIinference infrastructure partnerTechnology or Integration · 28 August 2025FriendliAI's per-request GPU inference platform already powers deployments of Upstage's Solar LLM. FriendliAI raised $20M seed extension led by Capstone Partners with participation from Sierra Ventures, Alumni Ventures, KDB and KB Securities, citing Upstage as a customer.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)flagship — preferred cloud provider with minority investmentStrategic or Co-development Partner · 19 August 2025AWS announced a strategic collaboration with Upstage including a minority investment from Amazon and designation of AWS as Upstage's preferred cloud provider. Partnership targets governments, public agencies, and regulated industries across Asia-Pacific and the US, leveraging Upstage's Solar LLM family and document processing solutions on AWS infrastructure including SageMaker and custom Trainium and Inferentia chips.

Scale indicators13 records

Recent moves10 records

Expansion highlights8 records

Direct peers

• Naver (HyperCLOVA X): Naver's HyperCLOVA X is a Korean foundation LLM targeting enterprise and sovereign AI use cases. It is the most direct Korean LLM competitor to Upstage's Solar family and is also pursuing the same national Sovereign AI award.
• LG AI Research (EXAONE): LG AI Research develops the EXAONE foundation model and is one of the consortia directly competing with Upstage in Korea's Sovereign AI Foundation Model Project. Both target enterprise Korean-language LLM applications with strong domestic backing.
• SK Telecom (A. / Sovereign AI Consortium): SK Telecom leads a competing consortium in Korea's Sovereign AI Foundation Model Project alongside Motif Technologies. It is developing a 200B+ parameter Korean LLM directly comparable to Upstage's planned sovereign model.
• Anthropic: Anthropic's Claude family of frontier LLMs competes head-to-head with Solar Pro 3 for enterprise reasoning, instruction-following, and document workflow use cases — the same Korean/Japanese/English enterprise segments Upstage targets.
• Cohere: Cohere provides enterprise-grade LLMs (Command, Embed) with a similar go-to-market focus on regulated industries, retrieval-augmented generation, and on-prem/private cloud deployment — closely aligned with Upstage's enterprise Solar and Studio positioning.
• Mistral AI: Mistral AI is a frontier European LLM provider with which Upstage has held formal collaboration discussions. Both target enterprise reasoning, document workflows, and region-specific fine-tuned variants — overlapping directly with Upstage's Solar and Syn Pro offerings.
• Karakuri: Karakuri Inc. is Upstage's co-development partner on Syn Pro and a leading Japanese enterprise LLM provider. They compete and collaborate in the Japan market for locally trained, on-prem-deployable LLMs tailored to Japanese enterprise and public-sector buyers.

Broad incumbents

• OpenAI: OpenAI's GPT-4/4o/5 family and ChatGPT Enterprise serve the same enterprise LLM and document-AI use cases as Upstage's Solar and Document Intelligence products. It is the dominant incumbent setting baseline expectations for performance and pricing.
• AWS Bedrock / Amazon Titan: AWS Bedrock offers a managed marketplace of foundation models (including Amazon Titan) on the same AWS infrastructure where Upstage Solar is listed. Bedrock is both a partner channel and a competing enterprise LLM distribution surface for the same regulated buyers.
• Databricks (Mosaic AI / DBRX): Databricks' Mosaic AI and DBRX model target enterprise data and AI workflows comparable to Upstage Studio's agentic document workflows. Both compete for the same regulated insurance, healthcare, and financial services LLM budgets.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/upstageai
• GitHubhuggingface.co/upstage
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/upstageai
• Facebookfacebook.com/upstageai

Compliance4 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Subsidiaries2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds9 records

Investors24 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A3 records

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Upstage