SK Networks (001740.KS) has invested an additional 50 billion won ($36 million) in Upstage, a startup that provides solutions based on generative AI.
SK Networks decided to acquire 103,054 shares of Upstage for approximately 50 billion won, the company said in a regulatory filing on the 31st. The transaction is aimed at participating in Upstage's Series C funding round, with the acquisition scheduled for the 29th of next month.
With this share acquisition, SK Networks' cumulative investment in Upstage has grown to approximately 122 billion won. SK Networks invested 25 billion won in Upstage's Series B round in January 2024. The company then invested an additional 47 billion won by exercising a call option agreed upon during the Series B investment, and has now added this 50 billion won share acquisition.
Upstage is a leading Korean AI startup that has secured competitiveness in the enterprise AI market based on its self-developed large language model (LLM) "Solar." The company has demonstrated its technological capabilities by ranking first on the "Open LLM Leaderboard" of Hugging Face, a global machine learning platform. SK Networks stated that the purpose of the acquisition is "to strengthen AI-related business capabilities and create business synergies."
Meanwhile, SK Networks' stake in Upstage remains at the existing 12.9% even after this investment. "Multiple investors besides SK Networks also made additional investments, so the stake ratio remains unchanged," a company official explained.
