Upstage Completes Acquisition of Daum Operator AXZ, Aiming to Become an AI Portal

Acquisition of AXZ Shares from Kakao

Combining Upstage’s AI Technology with Daum’s Search and Content

Advancing to a New AI Portal Powered by Proprietary LLM "SOLAR"

Sung-Hoon Kim, CEO of Upstage, is entering a hotel in downtown Seoul on the 19th to meet Lisa Su, CEO of AMD. Photo by Yonhap News Agency

Upstage announced on May 7 that it has finalized the acquisition of AXZ, the operator of the portal “Daum.” With its own large language model (LLM), Upstage plans to combine Daum's vast content data to restructure the dual-portal landscape dominated by Naver and Daum.

In January, Upstage and AXZ’s parent company Kakao signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for a share swap. Under this agreement, all of Kakao’s shares in AXZ were transferred to Upstage, while Kakao acquired a certain stake in Upstage. After about four months of thorough due diligence, the two companies have now signed the final contract and completed the acquisition process.

Leveraging this acquisition, Upstage aims to integrate its proprietary LLM, “SOLAR,” with Daum’s search engine and extensive content data to enhance its platform into a next-generation AI portal. The company plans to differentiate its services by offering “Context AI,” which understands user intent and context to provide answers, moving beyond simple keyword-based search. This marks the beginning of Upstage’s goal to establish itself as a next-generation portal, fully restructured with AI-driven services.

Upstage also expressed optimism about the positive synergy this will create for the government’s “Independent AI Foundation Model” project, in which the company is serving as the lead manager. By combining its nationally representative AI model, currently in development, with Daum, Upstage aims to expand the ecosystem of public AI services, making AI easily accessible to everyone through Daum’s platform.

Kim Seonghun, CEO of Upstage, stated, “This acquisition, which brings together Upstage’s technology as a leading domestic AI company and a national portal with a 30-year history, will become a symbolic turning point in the AI industry, ushering in a new era of AI portals.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.