# Sung Kim

> Sung Kim (김성훈), known professionally as Hun Kim, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Upstage AI, South Korea's first generative AI unicorn. A former HKUST professor and founding head of Naver Clova AI, he co-founded Upstage in October 2020 to solve the gap between enterprise data and practical AI deployment. Under his leadership, Upstage developed Solar - a compact 10.7B parameter language model - and Solar Pro 2, which outperforms GPT-4.1 at half the compute cost. With $326M in total funding and a Series C close in early 2026, Upstage is positioning itself as a global AI frontier company focused on enterprise document intelligence and AI agents.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Upstage
- **Organizations:** Upstage, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Naver Clova AI, Nara Vision Co., Ltd.
- **From:** South Korea
- **Nationality:** South Korean
- **Education:** B.S. in Computer Engineering, Daegu University, Korea, M.S. in Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz, Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz, Post-Doctoral Research, Program Analysis Group, MIT
- **Known for:** Co-founded Korea's first generative AI unicorn (Upstage), valued over $1 billion, Four-time winner of ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award (ICSE 2007, ASE 2012, ICSE 2013, ISSTA 2014), Two Ten-Year Most Influential Paper Awards in software engineering

## Career timeline

- **1995** — Co-Founded Nara Vision Co., Ltd.; developed KkebiMail, one of Korea's first webmail services
- **1996** — Created Kkachine, Korea's first automated search engine, while an undergraduate at Daegu University
- **2003** — Completed M.S. at UC Santa Cruz, focusing on machine learning-based software analysis
- **2006** — Earned Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz; dissertation on adaptive bug prediction via software history analysis
- **2006-2009** — Post-doctoral researcher in Program Analysis Group at MIT
- **2009** — Joined Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) as a professor in CSE department
- **2010-2011** — Won Microsoft Software Innovation Awards (2010, 2011); Google Faculty Research Award (2011)
- **2017** — Became Founding Head of Naver Clova AI; expanded team from 3 to 150 members
- **2020** — Co-founded Upstage AI in October with CTO Stan Lee (Hwalsuk Lee) and CSO Lucy Park
- **2021** — Upstage raised Series A of 31.6 billion won
- **2021** — Upstage won 10 Kaggle gold medals within 18 months of founding
- **2023** — Launched Solar - 10.7B parameter small language model (December 2023)
- **2024** — Raised Series B of 100 billion won
- **2024** — Became Korea's first government-approved generative AI provider (registered on Public Procurement Service Digital Service Mall, December 2024)
- **2026-03** — Closed Series C first tranche of $120M (₩180 billion); achieved unicorn status as Korea's first generative AI unicorn
- **2026-03** — Expanded strategic collaboration with AMD on sovereign AI infrastructure; met with AMD Chair/CEO Lisa Su in Seoul
- **2026-07** — Launched Solar Pro 2 - South Korea's first frontier model, outperforming GPT-4.1 by 5 points at half the model size

## Achievements

- Co-founded Korea's first generative AI unicorn (Upstage), valued over $1 billion
- Four-time winner of ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award (ICSE 2007, ASE 2012, ICSE 2013, ISSTA 2014)
- Two Ten-Year Most Influential Paper Awards in software engineering
- Created 'Deep Learning for Everyone' online course with over 6 million views
- Developed Korea's first automated search engine (Kkachine) as an undergraduate in 1996
- Built Naver Clova AI team from 3 to 150 members as Founding Head
- Led Upstage to win 10 Kaggle gold medals within 18 months of founding
- Raised $326M in total funding across multiple rounds
- Solar Pro 2 achieved 58 points on Intelligence Index, surpassing GPT-4.1 by 5 points
- Depth-Up Scaling technique reduces AI chip requirements to just 10% of what larger competitors need
- Microsoft Software Innovation Awards (2010, 2011)
- Google Faculty Research Award (2011)
- Upstage became Korea's first government-approved generative AI provider (December 2024)

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Launched Solar Pro 2, South Korea's first frontier AI model, scoring 58 on the Intelligence Index and outperforming GPT-4.1
- **2026-03** — Closed $120M Series C first tranche, achieving unicorn status as Korea's first generative AI unicorn
- **2026-03** — Expanded AMD partnership for sovereign AI infrastructure; discussed potential 10,000-chip purchase with AMD CEO Lisa Su
- **2026-02** — Declared 2026 'the inaugural year for commercialization of AI agents' in Seoul Economic Daily interview
- **2025-12** — Named on CB Insights AI 100 list for 2025
- **2024-12** — Upstage became Korea's first government-approved generative AI provider on Public Procurement Service Digital Service Mall

## Links

- Website: https://upstage.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunkimup/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/hunkims
- GitHub: https://github.com/hunkim
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/hunkims
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/upstageai

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/sung-kim
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-22