Amazon and AMD Just Backed This Korean AI Startup--Here's Why It Matters

Amazon AMZN and AMD AMD just placed a strategic bet on South Korea's Upstage, an enterprise-focused AI startup that's quietly becoming one to watch. The company raised $45 million in a Series B bridge round, with participation from Korea Development Bank and new capital from Amazon and AMD. That brings total funding to $157 million. The fresh injection is aimed squarely at scaling Upstage's next-gen foundation modeland expanding its reach across the US and Asia-Pacific.

As part of the deal, Upstage will build and deploy its models using Amazon Web Services. That includes tapping AWS's proprietary machine learning stack and AI-specific chipsan alignment that could give Upstage a critical edge in compute-hungry workloads. Amazon has been deliberate in where it invests in generative AI, said Kasey Roh, Upstage's head of US business. Beyond Anthropic, they've made very few public moves. Which is what makes this partnership all the more notable.

Upstage, founded in 2020 by former Naver AI chief Sung Kim, is best known for its Solar language model and automation tools that help enterprises extract more value from document-heavy workflows. With a customer base already leaning on AI to boost efficiency, the company's expansion pushfueled by new capital and cloud firepowercould put it on a collision course with more established players in the LLM arms race.