Kim Sung-hoon 김성훈
CEO, Upstage
Builder
Why they matterLeads Upstage, maker of the Solar models. Released open-weight Solar Open 2 in Jul 2026.
Jul 2026: Solar Open 2 released
Who’s shaping AI / South Korea
Who’s shaping AI in South Korea
The builders, researchers, policymakers, investors, explainers and critics moving AI forward in South Korea. Every entry links to a source and to the moments on our timeline.
- People
- 6
- Last checked
- 2 Oct 2026
Sung Ju Hwang 황성주
Professor, KAIST Graduate School of AI
Researcher
Why they matterResearches language models, model compression and AI for materials discovery.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Bae Kyung-hoon 배경훈
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT
Policymaker
Why they matterLeads Korea's AI ministry. Says 260,000 GPUs are secured through 2030.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Lee Jun-pyo 이준표
CEO, SBVA
Investor
Why they matterSBVA, formerly SoftBank Ventures Asia, backed Upstage early and joined the 2026 Databricks round.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Kim Dae-sik 김대식
Professor, KAIST Electrical Engineering
Explainer
Why they matterNeuroscientist who gives public lectures on AGI and AI literacy.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
Chang Yeo-kyeong 장여경
Executive Director, Institute for Digital Rights
Critic & watchdog
Why they matterSays civil society was shut out of drafting Korea's AI Basic Act.
Checked 2 Oct 2026
On the AIooze timeline
Moments these people shaped
Nothing on our timeline names these people yet. Key moments are on each profile.