The artificial intelligence startup Upstage Co. Ltd., which creates massive language models for document processing, stated today that it has raised an additional $72 million to enhance its capabilities.
The firm has raised a total of $100 million from its Series B fundraising round, nearly double the amount that Upstage raised in 2021. New investors include Korea Development Bank, Shinhan Venture Investment Co., Hana Ventures, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, and IBK Securities made investments in the round. Previous backers such as Premier Partners, Company K Partners, Primer Sazze, SBVA (formerly SoftBank Ventures Asia), and SBVA participated as well.
Enterprise clients can customize Upstage’s document processing engine and large language model, Solar, to meet their unique requirements in the e-commerce, healthcare, finance, and legal sectors. When the two technologies are used together, users may scan both digital and physical documents rapidly and ask questions about them in plain, conversational English.
The “Document AI” solution from Upstage is powered by optical character recognition, or OCR, technology, which rapidly digitises and comprehends handwritten and typed documents in order to extract information. According to the business, its 99% classification accuracy rate can identify not only text but also graphs and checkboxes, regardless of how they are twisted, tilted, or wrinkled.
This makes it appropriate for physical document boxes or reams that have been stored in warehouses and must be consumed. According to the business, it can also quickly process survey materials that have “chicken scratches” from staff members or clients at a conference.
Upstage’s co-founder and CEO, Sung Kim, expressed confidence that the financing is an excellent opportunity to launch a global expansion with a new office in San Jose, California, citing the company’s success in South Korea as justification. “ This funding will help us build the world’s best generative AI model and deliver the ultimate ‘AGI for work’ solution to businesses worldwide,” Kim said.
Upstage’s Solar LLM can be integrated through application programming interfaces and deployed on-premises using platforms like Amazon SageMaker JumpStart. According to the company, Solar was created to offer a more affordable substitute for the more elaborate, resource-intensive, and larger versions created by the industry’s biggest players.
According to the company, there is a great need for its service in fast-growing sectors like healthcare and finance. Upstage’s current clientele includes the South Korean commercial group Hanwha Group and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.