Softbank Vision Fund Leads $800 Million Round in Korean AI Startup

Largest AI Funding Round in Asia This Year

SoftBank Group Corp.'s Vision Fund 2 led an $800 million Series C investment in Upstage Co., a South Korean artificial intelligence company that develops enterprise-grade large language models and document processing solutions. The round values Upstage at approximately $4.5 billion, making it one of the most valuable AI startups in Asia outside of China.

Existing investors Samsung Venture Investment, Korean Development Bank, and Kakao Ventures also participated in the round, along with new investors Intel Capital and Canada's Brookfield Asset Management.

Enterprise AI Focus

Upstage, founded in 2020 by former Naver Corp. AI researchers, has built its business on Solar, a family of large language models optimized for enterprise applications including document understanding, multilingual translation, and code generation. The company's Solar Mini model, designed for on-device inference, has been deployed by Samsung Electronics in its Galaxy AI suite.

"Upstage represents a rare combination of world-class AI research talent and practical enterprise deployment," said Lydia Jett, managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. "Their models achieve GPT-4-class performance on Korean and Japanese language tasks while being small enough to run on mobile devices."

Product Portfolio

Upstage's primary revenue product, Document AI, automates the extraction and processing of information from unstructured documents including contracts, invoices, financial statements, and regulatory filings. The platform serves over 200 enterprise clients across financial services, legal, government, and manufacturing sectors.

Revenue for 2025 reached approximately $85 million, growing 120% year-over-year. The company reported that it achieved cash-flow breakeven in the fourth quarter. Annual recurring revenue from subscription contracts exceeded $60 million.

Expansion Plans

Upstage said it would use the funding to expand into Japan, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. The company opened a Tokyo office in January and has secured pilot contracts with three major Japanese financial institutions for document processing and compliance automation.

"The Japanese enterprise market is perhaps the largest untapped opportunity for AI document processing globally," said Sung Kim, Upstage's CEO. "Japanese businesses process enormous volumes of paper documents, and the language complexity creates a natural moat for specialized models."

Korean AI Ecosystem

The investment highlights the growing depth of South Korea's AI ecosystem. Naver, the country's largest internet company, has invested over $1 billion in its HyperCLOVA large language model. Samsung and LG are both building AI research labs, and the Korean government's Digital New Deal has allocated 3.8 trillion won for AI infrastructure and talent development through 2027.

Other notable Korean AI startups include Rebellions Inc. (AI chip design, valued at $1.2 billion), Lunit (medical AI, listed on KOSDAQ), and Riiid (adaptive learning AI, acquired by Turnitin in 2024).

Valuation Context

Upstage's $4.5 billion valuation places it in the upper tier of global AI startups, below Anthropic ($60 billion), OpenAI ($150 billion+), and Mistral ($6 billion), but ahead of most Asian AI companies outside of China. The valuation implies approximately 53 times trailing revenue, a premium that reflects investor expectations for continued rapid growth as enterprise AI adoption accelerates.

SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 has deployed approximately $51 billion since its inception, with AI-related companies accounting for an increasing share of new investments. The fund's AI portfolio also includes Arm Holdings, Symbotic, and Cohesity.