Upstage, a South Korea-based AI startup brings USD 27 million in a Series A funding round led by early-stage VC arm of SoftBank, SoftBank Ventures Asia and co-invested with Company K Partners on 17 September 2021.
Investors: SoftBank Ventures led the latest funding round with a co-investment from Company K Partners. In addition, TBT Partners, Premier Partners, Stonebridge Ventures, and Primer Sazze Fund also contributed to this round.
The objective behind the funding: The startup plans to deploy the proceeds to hire more than 200 AI developers, software and research engineers for system and solution development. Upstage aims to expand to Japan, the Americas, and Southeast Asia.
About Upstage
Founded in October 2020 by former Naver Clova AI leader Kim Seong-hoon, former Naver Clova OCR/Visual leader Lee Hwan-Seok, and former Papago translator modelling leader Park Eun-Jung, Upstage’s AI platform provides a cloud solution that can standardize and automate critical tasks in an enterprise such as data annotation. Since its inception, Upstage has successfully introduced AI to various customers in various fields such as finance, education, and distribution and achieved sales of USD 7.6 million within eight months of establishment. In addition, the startup won five gold medals in the AI contest Kaggle.
What the Investor has to say:
Upstage CEO Kim Seong-hoon said, “We plan to actively provide AI Packs that advance AI service models so that each company can focus on their own core business. We will do our best to build an environment where technological innovation through AI Pack can advance each industry.”
What the Investors have to say:
Company K Partners Vice President Jun-Young Byun, who led this investment, said, “Through Upstage’s AI Pack, any company in the world can conveniently build AI services using their own data, and decided to invest in the belief that a convenient world will come through technological innovation. The AI industry is the next big thing with definite growth,”
“AI technology is becoming more popular, and many companies are in need of AI solutions that can be applied to their services. Upstage’s ability to develop AI models and operate infrastructure Based on this, we expect to quickly dominate the market,” said Jin Yun-Jeong, managing director of SoftBank Ventures, who led the investment together.
It is evident that AI technology will be the next significant shift for humanity. We encounter it almost every day, without us being aware of it. The upstage platform aims to tackle obstacles during this shift, thus facilitates AI adoption by businesses.
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