Upstage, a leading enterprise-grade generative AI and document intelligence company, announced a $45 million series B bridge round. This comes after a recent raise of $157 million from the Korean Development Bank (KDB), Amazon, and AMD.
The proceeds will be used for:
- Accelerating the development of Upstage’s advanced Solar large language model, which is the basis of its enterprise AI solutions.
- Expanding its sophisticated Document Intelligence suite to help interpret and automate workflows, starting with complex enterprise documents.
- Supporting Upstage’s burgeoning sales and marketing, as well as creating an international presence. Especially in North America and the Asia-Pacific market.
Upstage also recently announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), where AWS will become Upstage’s preferred cloud infrastructure partner.
Upstage will be using various AWS tools. Tools like SageMaker and AWS silicon (Trainum and Inferentia) to streamline the processes of model training, instructional deployment, and scaling.
Insurance and insurtech emerge as Upstage’s primary target verticals. In these sectors, inefficiencies abound, especially in the U.S. Claim adjudication expense has ballooned to $25.7 billion, with an estimated $18 billion attributed to reversed denials and process redundancies. Upstage promises to solve these inefficiencies through automation and AI-driven document processing.
At the center of its solutions, the Document Intelligence suite comprises:
Document Parse:
Converts unstructured documents into structured, AI-readable formats.
Information Extract:
Precisely takes out critical data points from various types of documents like policies, invoices, and financial statements. The platform is said to attain more than 95% accuracy, severely cutting down manual entry and allowing faster decision-making.
Upstage’s AI stack runs on Solar LLM, an in-house developed set of small language models created with Amazon SageMaker and listed under the Amazon Bedrock Marketplace. The Universal Information Extractor is also available through the AWS AI Agents and Tools Marketplace.
Fortune 500 companies like Samsung, South Korean insurers, and public agencies already use Upstage’s technology. This demonstrates its shift from concept to full-scale deployment.
This Series B bridge comes on the heels of a prior $72 million Series B round in 2024, led by Korean investors like SK Networks and Shinhan Venture Investment. Upstage was also recently named to the CB Insights AI 100 list, highlighting its worldwide potential for enterprise AI.
Market Context & Enterprise AI Growth
Enterprise AI is no longer a mere workshop. It has developed into a strategic layer of business activities. Organizations are layering AI into workflows to benefit from speed, accuracy, and cost savings. Right from processing documents or interacting with customers to app-based banking, AI is used in almost every business.
AI tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and DALL-E-3 make it easier for businesses to complete daily tasks.
Forecast:
According to Grand View Research, the global enterprise generative AI market is projected to increase to USD 19.81 billion in 2030 from USD 2.94 billion in 2024 at a CAGR of 38.4%..
Impacts on growth:
cloud adoption, the drive to automate, and regulatory pressure from sectors with high compliance costs like insurance, health care, and banking.
Enterprise context:
As we discussed, consumer AI is fundamentally about enabling the user experience and will be designed to engage with that in mind.
While not reviewed in this document, we ponder whether AI for enterprise can provide a similar level of usability in the future, but first needs to provide increased accuracy, domain-specific assurance, and safety of deployment.
Future Outlook & Growth Plans
As it heads into the short-term future, Upstage is deploying an aggressive growth strategy for expansion across both geographical and technological fronts.
The company is poised to ramp up its US and Asia-Pac presence over the next 12-18 months, targeting industries where document workflows are top of mind, like insurance, healthcare & banking. Upstage is also planning to build up its engineering and sales teams to support growth while boosting local delivery of solutions and enterprise support.
Upstage’s focus is on building lighter, enterprise-optimized models that balance performance and cost. The company anchors the roadmap in ongoing development of the Solar LLM family. The company also plans to expand its Document Intelligence suite into cross-industry deployments, from compliance reporting to financial operations.
Aumo industry studies indicate that 82% of businesses using AI in their decision-making process see a competitive advantage including including a 50% faster speed of decision making, and an 11% increase in profitability.
This validates the potential impact of Upstage’s offerings as enterprises shift from piloting AI to integrating it into their daily operations.
The common thread in Upstage’s strategy as AI’s global adoption accelerates is in line with industry trends; enterprises are transitioning rapidly from testing ideas to building AI systems into operational processes.
Key Takeaways for Investors
The $45M bridge round marks a larger trend: investors are no longer merely hot-pursuing generative AI hype; they’re betting on enterprise-applicable platforms with successful use cases in hand. Upstage is an example that falls into this category nicely, and its investors explain why:
Korea Development Bank (KDB):
A veteran driver of Korea’s tech ecosystem, KDB’s involvement indicates faith in Upstage’s ability to expand on the global stage, in addition to its local success.
Amazon:
Upstage has partnered with AWS as its primary infrastructure provider. It gives access to advanced tools like SageMaker, Trainium, and Inferentia.
This ensures scalability and enterprise-level deployment. Amazon’s investment further strengthens the partnership and underscores Upstage’s cloud-first strategy.
AMD:
In its emphasis on AI-optimized silicon, AMD views Upstage as a demonstration partner for providing accelerated, cost-effective AI workloads, critical for businesses that are concerned with infrastructure costs.
Together, this mix of diverse investors testifies to Upstage’s tech moat: niche models, document intelligence knowledge, and an industry-first go-to-market approach in insurance and more.
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