Upstage, Preparing for IPO with Daum and Timely, Vows to Usher in "AI for All" Era (Comprehensive)

Launch of Upstage Company, Including AXZ and Timely
Cumulative Investment Reaches 730 Billion Won
AI Agent 'Upstage Studio' Unveiled
Portal Site Daum Evolves into 'Agent Daum'
"Former Chief Ha Jeongwoo Does Not Hold Upstage Shares"

Upstage, the first domestic generative artificial intelligence (AI) startup to achieve unicorn status (with a corporate value of at least 1 trillion won), has announced the launch of "Upstage Company" with the ambition to usher in an era of "AI for All" that embraces both general users and AI agents. The company plans to create synergy by integrating its large language model (LLM), AI agents, and portal site into a unified platform.

On the morning of June 16, at the Media Day event held at Conrad Hotel in Yeouido, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, Upstage CEO Kim Seonghun stated, "The birth of Upstage Company marks the first step in Korea to connect a powerful AI model, agents, and a widely used platform into one," adding, "We aim to go beyond AI for enterprises and open an era of AI for everyone." Upstage Company consists of Upstage as its core, AXZ—recently acquired and the operator of the portal site "Daum"—and Timely, a general AI agent platform.

Kim Seonghun, CEO of Upstage, is speaking at the media day event held on the morning of the 16th at the Conrad Hotel in Yeouido, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul. Upstage

CEO Kim added, "More than 200 companies worldwide, including those in Korea, the United States, and Japan, are adopting Upstage AI," and noted, "The value of new contracts signed in the first half of 2026 has already surpassed the total for the entire previous year." The cumulative investment raised by Upstage has reached approximately 730 billion won, including 100 billion won recently secured from the National Growth Fund's Advanced Strategy Fund.

Upstage is utilizing the investment funds for purchasing graphics processing units (GPUs) and business operations expenses. CEO Kim explained, "Currently, more than half of the investment is being used for model training."

He also emphasized the importance of sovereign AI. Kim stated, "Korea is an AI powerhouse equipped with everything from hardware to software and application services, allowing it to benefit strategically amid the US-China tech rivalry," and stressed, "We must cultivate Korea's sovereign AI." Commenting on the recent US export controls imposed on Anthropic’s high-performance AI model 'Mythos', Kim said, "AI has become a national strategic asset," and emphasized, "We must advance our own technology as much as possible, and support needs to be more than tenfold what it is now."

The preview version of Upstage's open-source model, "Solar Open 2," which is being developed through the "Independent Foundation AI Model" project, recorded a score of 44.4 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (AAII), an AI performance evaluation agency—showing performance similar to Anthropic's 'Claude Sonnet 4.6' and OpenAI's 'GPT-5'. In particular, its agent capabilities (on the Tau2-Bench) reached 98%, on par with Anthropic’s latest model, "Fable 5" (98.5%).

Regarding the performance of Solar Open 2, CEO Kim said, "Our goal is to create the best open-source model available by the end of this year." He announced plans to release Solar Open 2 by the end of this month and the commercial model "Solar Pro 4" by the end of July.

AI Agent 'Upstage Studio' Released... Daum Evolves into 'Agent Daum'

Lee Geonsu, CEO of AXZ, the operator of the portal site "Daum," is speaking at the Upstage Media Day event held on the morning of the 16th at the Conrad Hotel in Yeouido, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul. Upstage

On this day, Upstage unveiled the procedural AI agent "Upstage Studio." Procedural agents divide work into individual steps, which can be combined like Lego blocks for automation. After each step, human verification is required, supplementing the limitations of autonomous AI agents. CEO Kim emphasized, "For successful AI adoption, it is crucial to combine agents beyond just model performance."

Timely CEO Kim Daehwan, who took the stage next, explained, "Timely enables anyone to instantly implement solutions in their real work environment with just one click and no separate coding, allowing users to easily build their own work environment," adding, "The core of Timely is converting individual AI usage experiences into assets that can be shared across the entire organization." Timely provides integrated work agents for tasks such as image and video generation and document conversion, based on various AI models including Solar. It is currently used by over 600 institutions, including local governments and public and educational organizations nationwide. Upstage acquired Timely on June 9.

Eunsu Lee, CEO of AXZ, unveiled the concept of "Agent Daum," which integrates AI agents into the Daum portal site. Lee explained, "Portals in the AI era aim for 'hybrid search,' where AI agents independently combine keywords and context to find answers." He demonstrated Daum’s soon-to-be-launched "AI Overview" feature, showcasing how agents automatically organize everything from search to answers.

Regarding the differentiation of Daum's AI features compared to rival portals such as Naver and Google, Lee commented, "It will be difficult for the AI search summary function itself to be fundamentally distinct," but added, "We intend to focus on vertical (specialized) search."

Meanwhile, regarding Upstage's initial public offering (IPO) plans, CEO Kim stated, "What I can say now is that the lead underwriter has been selected and IPO preparations are underway," and added, "The specifics of the schedule and direction are still under internal discussion."

In response to a question about whether former Blue House Chief of AI Future Planning Ha Jeongwoo is a shareholder of Upstage, CEO Kim clarified, "Mr. Ha does not own a single share in Upstage," stressing, "All shares have been liquidated; there is no longer any shareholder relationship with the company."

Daehwan Kim, CEO of Timely, is speaking at the Upstage Media Day event held on the morning of the 16th at the Conrad Hotel in Yeouido, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul. Upstage

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.