FSC approves 560 billion won investment in homegrown AI unicorn Upstage

Kwon Dae-young, vice chairman of the Financial Services Commission, speaks during a briefing at the central government complex in central Seoul in February. [NEWS1]

Financial authorities said Sunday they approved a 560 billion won ($380.6 million) investment in Upstage, a homegrown AI startup, marking the second direct investment by the Korea National Growth Fund.

 

The decision was approved at a deliberation committee for the fund held Thursday, the Financial Services Commission said.

 


Founded in 2020, Upstage is a unicorn startup valued at over 1 trillion won and develops AI solutions and large language models, or LLM. The startup is the second company to receive investments from the policy fund, following Rebellions, a first which designs neural processing units for AI inference.

 

Also during the meeting, the deliberation committee approved four other funding plans, including a 400 billion won equity investment in a construction project to build an AI computing center in South Jeolla. 

 

Introduced last year, the Korea National Growth Fund aims to nurture startups in strategic industries, such as AI, bio and semiconductors. The government plans to raise up to 150 trillion won both from the private and public sectors and operate the fund for the next five years.

 

 

Yonhap