S. Korean startup Upstage unveils AI-powered solutions for businesses

Startups 16:25 May 16, 2023

By Kim Boram

SEOUL, May 16 (Yonhap) -- Upstage, a South Korean startup, on Tuesday unveiled its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions for businesses that provide automated document processing and individually-tailored search services.

The Document AI Pack is Upstage's flagship no-code program based on the optical character recognition (OCR) technology that converts scanned documents into editable and sharable text files.

Upstage said its high-performance AI and fine-tuning technology extract the necessary content of complex document in a more precise way, and reproduce it in a new digital form to help companies streamline their documentation process and reduce repetitive manual work.

Sung Kim, co-founder and CEO of Upstage, speaks during a press conference in Seoul on May 16, 2023, in this photo provided by the company. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

"When you use a product, its performance is the most important thing," Sung Kim, co-founder and CEO of Upstage, said in a press conference. "Our fine-tuning OCR technology shows 96 percent accuracy in recognizing a medical bill receipt."

Leading financial institutions, including Samsung Life Insurance Co. and KB Kookmin Bank, are some examples of its clients, he added.

Upstage's AskUp Seargest is an upgraded business model of its ChatGPT-integrated free chatbot, AskUp, which has gained popularity since it was launched on the country's most popular mobile messenger, KakaoTalk, in March. Its users had topped 1 million as of early May.

For the upgraded model, the company has developed a "search-and-suggestion" AI engine that offers personalized and latest recommendations through its fine-tuning technology used in the Document AI Pack.

Kim said some 100 local companies, including Kyobo Bookstore, the country's largest bookstore chain, are in talks with Upstage to adopt AskUp Seargest to their customer and marketing services.

"Our AI model uses ChatGPT in 70 percent of our programs," Kim, who had led Naver's AI engine HyperCLOVA project, said. "We keep working on reducing our dependence on ChatGPT."

Upstage said it expects to break even next year through its new business models and its overseas operations, including the newly launched AskUp service through the Line messenger in Japan.

"We've secured 6 billion won (US$4.5 million) in sales for last year and 5 billion won for the first half of this year," Kwon Soon-il, head of AI biz strategy and development at Upstage, said. "We will build a foothold for our global business based on our extensible language model."