SK Networks Bets Big on Upstage's 'Solar' With Cumulative Investment of 122 Billion Won

*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an 'AI-based customized news recommendation and summarization service' developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six tailored news items for each reader type.

1. SK Networks Invests Additional 50 Billion Won in Upstage

- Key Summary: SK Networks announced on the 31st that it decided to acquire 103,054 shares of generative AI startup Upstage for approximately 50 billion won. The investment is aimed at participating in Upstage's Series C round, with the share acquisition scheduled for April 29. SK Networks invested 25 billion won in Upstage's Series B round in January 2024, followed by 47 billion won through call option exercises, and now this additional 50 billion won, bringing the cumulative investment to 122 billion won. Upstage is targeting the enterprise AI market based on its proprietary LLM 'Solar' and has earned recognition for its technology by ranking first on Hugging Face's 'Open LLM Leaderboard,' a global machine learning platform.

2. Yanolja Surpasses 1 Trillion Won in Revenue Last Year… "Global Strategy Pays Off"

- Key Summary: Global travel tech company Yanolja recorded consolidated revenue of 1.0292 trillion won under K-IFRS standards in 2025, surpassing the 1-trillion-won mark for the first time since its founding. The Consumer Platform (CP) division posted revenue of 723.7 billion won, up 7.8% year-on-year, while the global Enterprise Solutions (ES) division achieved 352.6 billion won, a 20.5% increase. Notably, EBITDA for the ES division rose 30.3% year-on-year to 88.2 billion won, driven by expanded supply of AI and data-based automation solutions to travel operators worldwide. Global annual gross merchandise value surged 44.9% year-on-year to a record 39.2 trillion won, with transaction shares in Europe, Latin America, and other global markets continuing to expand.

3. GPT Generates Answers, Claude Verifies… Microsoft Uses Both in Enterprise AI

- Key Summary: Microsoft added 'Critique,' a multi-model self-review feature, to 'Researcher,' the deep research AI agent within its enterprise AI service '365 Copilot.' In this system, OpenAI's GPT drafts a report and Anthropic's Claude verifies it, cross-evaluating the reliability of information sources, report completeness, and validity of evidence. According to Microsoft's proprietary DRACO metric, Critique improved performance by 54.5% in medicine and 30% in general knowledge compared to a single model. Microsoft also unveiled 'Council,' a feature in which GPT and Claude simultaneously draft reports while a third dedicated review model critiques both reports and summarizes key findings.

4. K-Defense Boom Ignites Local Government Competition for 'Innovation Clusters'

- Key Summary: As the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) launched a new regional competition for defense advanced strategic industries including defense semiconductors, AI, robotics, space, and advanced materials, local governments nationwide have jumped into the bidding war. Defense innovation clusters began with Changwon in Gyeongnam Province in 2020, with three currently in operation. DAPA plans to expand to six regions by 2026 by designating three to four new locations through this competition. Selected local governments will receive 24.5 billion won in central government funding over five years through 2030, while local governments must cover at least 30% of total project costs with local funds. With K-defense demand surging due to the prolonged Russia-Ukraine war and Middle East conflicts, competition is intensifying as regions link their specialized resources — including the Incheon International Airport MRO (maintenance, repair, and operations) cluster, AI defense robots, advanced composite materials, and space launch vehicles — to defense cluster development.

5. Imagoworks Selects Samsung Securities as IPO Lead Manager

- Key Summary: Imagoworks, an AI-based dental solution startup, selected Samsung Securities (016360.KS) as its IPO lead manager and began pursuing its initial public offering in earnest. Founded in 2019 by CEO Kim Young-jun, a former researcher at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Imagoworks' core competitiveness lies in using AI and 3D printing technology to reduce dental prosthetic production time — for crowns, implants, and other items — from over one week to under one hour. The company has secured approximately 18,000 users by supplying prosthetic design solutions to more than 200 dental clinics and labs domestically and internationally, with cumulative funding of 36 billion won. With 80 of its 140 employees dedicated to research and more than 150 patents filed, Imagoworks aims to list on KOSDAQ in 2027 via a technology special listing and plans to conduct a pre-IPO funding round in the second half of this year.

6. Gemini 87 Points, ChatGPT 60, Perplexity 43… 'Literacy' Determines AI Scores

- Key Summary: Jongro Academy had major generative AI models take the March nationwide academic assessment in Korean, math, and English. Average scores were Gemini (87.8 points), ChatGPT (59.5 points), and Perplexity (43.7 points). Gemini scored at the top-grade level in Korean and math, and second-grade level in English — sufficient for admission to 'SKY' universities — while Perplexity dropped to grade 6-8 in math, starkly revealing performance gaps between models. Math showed the largest gap, with differences in technical capability most pronounced on problems requiring complex condition interpretation and step-by-step solution design. Even on basic questions at the middle school third-year level, some models produced wrong answers by failing to identify connections between pieces of information, highlighting AI models' literacy and contextual comprehension as key performance variables.