▲ Financial Services Commission Chairman Lee Eog-weon speaks during a meeting in Seoul, in this file photo taken on April 14, 2026. (Yonhap)

national growth fund-investment

Gov't to inject 560 bln won into S. Korean AI startup Upstage

SEOUL, May 3 (Yonhap) -- Financial authorities said Sunday they approved a 560 billion-won (US$380.6 million) investment in Upstage Co., a local artificial intelligence (AI) startup, marking the second direct investment by the Korea National Growth Fund.

The decision was approved at a deliberation committee for the fund held Thursday, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) said.

Founded in 2020, Upstage is a unicorn startup valued at over 1 trillion won and develops AI solutions and large language models, or LLM. The startup is the second company to receive investments from the policy fund, following Rebellions Inc., which designs neural processing units for AI inference.

Also during the meeting, the deliberation committee approved four other funding plans, including a 400 billion-won equity investment in a construction project to build an AI computing center in South Jeolla Province

Introduced last year, the Korea National Growth Fund aims to nurture startups in strategic industries, such as AI, bio and semiconductors. The government plans to raise up to 150 trillion won both from the private and public sectors and operate the fund for the next five years.

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