Lee Gyu-lee is a business writer at The Korea Times, focusing primarily on IT & telecommunications, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and KOTRA. Prior to this, she has covered a wide range of cultural news, from film, television and K-pop to lifestyle and fashion.
Upstage launches AI agent strategy with new ecosystem push
Upstage CEO Kim Sung-hoon speaks during the company's media day in Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of Upstage
By Lee Gyu-lee
Upstage announces Upstage Company, comprising Timely, AXZ
Upstage unveiled an ambitious push into artificial intelligence (AI) agents on Tuesday, launching a new corporate structure that integrates its proprietary models, an agent platform and a major consumer-facing portal service.
The startup announced the launch of Upstage Company, a group comprising Upstage and its recently acquired companies, AI agent platform Timely and internet portal Daum’s operator AXZ.
The move reflects the company’s strategy to vertically integrate AI models, agent technologies and large-scale user platforms into a single ecosystem as part of its vision of pushing AI for all.
“The launch of Upstage Company marks a meaningful first step in connecting, for the first time in Korea, a powerful AI model, agents and a platform used by everyone,” Upstage CEO Kim Sung-hoon said during the company's media day in Yeouido, Seoul. “We will move beyond enterprise AI and usher in an era of AI for everyone.”
Central to the strategy is Upstage’s focus on AI agents, in which autonomous and workflow-based agents carry out complex tasks, rather than standalone chatbot services. “Chat-based services are already becoming a thing of the past. The direction now is toward agentization,” he said.
“Personal tasks will be handled by autonomous agents, while tasks requiring strict steps will rely on procedural agents. We see the future in these two types … Upstage will advance both to become a key player in the agent era.”
As part of that effort, Upstage introduced Upstage Studio, a procedural AI agent platform that allows users to automate individual work processes by combining task-specific agents into structured workflows.
AXZ CEO Lee Geon-soo speaks during Upstage's media day in Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of Upstage
The company plans to pair those workflow agents with autonomous agents, creating systems capable of executing broader and more complex business processes with minimal human intervention.
The CEO said its open-source model Solar Open 2, currently being developed for the government-led national foundation model project, has achieved performance levels comparable to leading global models in benchmarks.
AXZ CEO Lee Geon-soo outlined plans to transform Daum into an AI-powered search and content platform built on Upstage’s models and the portal’s decades of accumulated data assets.
It plans to roll out AI Overview and AI Mode features for its search engine service next month and expand them across search queries through the end of this year.
It is also developing AI-powered vertical search services spanning areas such as shopping, restaurants, travel and real estate, allowing users to make natural-language requests and receive synthesized answers rather than lists of links.
Lee said Daum’s long history in news, dictionaries and user-generated specialized databases provides a strong foundation for AI services. “These are precisely the kinds of data assets needed in the AI era,” he said.
“Daum News, launched in 1990, holds roughly 36 years of archives, with 30,000 to 50,000 fact-checked articles added daily — an asset we see as critical in the AI era,” he said. “Upstage will provide the large language model and partner with vertical players to build a mutually beneficial ecosystem.”
Kim framed AI capabilities as a matter of national competitiveness. “AI is no longer just a service or a tool. It has become a strategic national asset. Countries that possess the technology can cut off supply at any time if they choose,” the Upstage CEO said as he called for significantly increased government support.