Upstage said on April 15 it has completed the first close of a Series C funding round totaling 180 billion won.

The fundraising valued Upstage at more than 1 trillion won. Silicon Valley-based global venture capital firm Sages Partners participated as the lead investor. Major institutional investors including Premier Partners, Shinhan Venture Investment, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, KB Securities and InterVest participated as follow-on investors, and global investment firms including Axiom Asia, as well as Hyundai Motor and Kia and Woori Venture Partners, joined as new investors.

Upstage provides industry-specific AI solutions with its in-house large language model (LLM) Solar and document-processing AI Document Parse. It was selected as the lead company for the Ministry of Science and ICT-led Independent Foundation Model (Dokpa-mo) project.

With the first close of the Series C round, Upstage's cumulative funding has expanded to about 400 billion won. Since its founding in 2020, Upstage has raised seed funding and later secured Series A funding in 2021 (31.6 billion won), Series B funding in 2024 (100 billion won) and Series B bridge funding in 2025 (62 billion won).

Upstage plans to focus the large funds secured this time on expanding GPU infrastructure to advance its AI models, including the Dokpa-mo project, hiring top talent at home and abroad, and developing overseas markets such as the United States and Japan.

Upstage CEO Sung-hoon Kim (김성훈) said, "We will advance our own AI models with competitiveness not only in Korea but also in global markets, and become a company that proves itself through revenue, not just corporate value."