6/28/2023

• Upstage and KT signed MoU on Jun 27 to promote AI-based paperless digital transformation (DX) initiatives to advance ESG practices

• Leveraging Upstage's leadership in AI OCR technologies, the two companies will lead digital transformation of industries in Korea

• "Upstage will continue to take the lead in supporting AI innovation for various enterprise customers through our world-class AI technology."

(Seoul, Jun. 28, 2023 /Upstage) Upstage has joined forces with KT, Korea's telecommunications giant, to expand the Business-to-Business (B2B) reach.

Upstage has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with KT to foster collaboration in AI-driven paperless digital transformation (DX) initiatives, aimed at advancing ESG management practices. The signing ceremony took place at the KT Songpa Building in Seoul, with key executives from both companies, including Upstage's CEO Sung Kim and KT's Head of Corporate Client Park Jung-jun, in attendance.

As the mandatory ESG (environmental, social, and governance) disclosure comes into play, public companies are striving to enhance their sustainability efforts by minimizing document emissions through the adoption of electronic formats. This has sparked a growing demand for “paperless” solutions that leverage AI-powered optical character recognition (OCR) technology, which can efficiently process electronic documents by reading and extracting characters as text data.

Under the MoU, the two companies have agreed to collaborate in response to the rapidly evolving B2B market landscape. The joint efforts will encompass various areas, including addressing the demand for electronic document conversion and storage, enhancing B2B operational efficiency through developing AI OCR technology, and exploring convergence opportunities to expedite digital transformation for the enterprises.

Upstage is highly regarded for its leadership in this field. Alongside presenting exceptional papers at prestigious international AI conferences such as NeurlPS, AAAI, ACL, and EMNLP, Upstage recently achieved remarkable success by securing four category wins in the esteemed AI OCR challenge organized by the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR). The Document AI Pack, which incorporates Upstage's advanced AI OCR technology, stands out due to its ability to process various document types with a single click. It significantly reduces costs and processing time by 82% compared to manual methods. Moreover, it offers pre-trained models that deliver exceptional performance, using only a fraction of the data required by global competitors.

Through this agreement, the two companies will explore opportunities for collaborative business ventures in digital transformation. These initiatives include automating B2B customer tasks, enhancing cloud-based paperless solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises, and jointly driving sales and marketing efforts targeting corporate clients across various industries, including finance, IT, manufacturing, and commerce. Notably, Upstage will serve as AI technology advisory partner for KT and assist in implementing Upstage OCR within the group's workflows.

Upstage is at the forefront of the digital transformation, delivering documentation AI solutions to a wide range of corporate clients, including POSCO Holdings, Samsung SDI, as well as major financial institutions such as Samsung Life and Hanwha Life Insurance. Furthermore, Upstage is venturing into the realm of hyper-personalized AI-based recommendations with AskUp Seargest, an enterprise version of AskUp, the most popular chat AI in Korea with over 1.2 million users. The demand for Upstage's advanced search-and-recommend AI solutions is already soaring, with prominent commerce platforms like Lotte-ON having already secured contracts to leverage this technology.

"We are pleased to collaborate with KT, a leading telecommunications company in Korea, to promote B2B opportunities utilizing Upstage’s OCR technology," said Sung Kim, CEO of Upstage. "Upstage will continue to take the lead in supporting AI innovation for various enterprise customers through our world-class AI technology."

"By collaborating with Upstage, renowned for its world-class technology, we will deliver DX across the entire lifecycle, including the creation, distribution, and storage of electronic documents for sustainable ESG management," said Park Jung-jun, KT’s Head of Corporate Customers. "We will further strive to accelerate the digital transformation of the B2B market through multifaceted collaboration across various industries."

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