“We’re Still No.1” — Upstage's Bold Response to Elon Musk
“We’re Still No.1” — Upstage's Bold Response to Elon Musk In July 2025, something remarkable happened in Korea’s AI scene. As Elon Musk’s xAI was touting its latest large language model (LLM), Grok-4 , a much smaller Korean startup — Upstage — made global headlines with its new model, SOLAR Pro 2 , standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Big Tech giants. But what truly captured attention wasn’t just the performance—it was the public exchange that followed. Elon Musk took to X (formerly Twitter) to declare, “Grok is still #1 and improving fast.” Upstage’s CEO, Sung Kim, replied: “Congrats. But it won’t last long.” This wasn’t mere social media banter. It marked the first time a Korean-born LLM challenged the world’s largest models — not in ambition, but in actual performance, efficiency, and technological edge. Upstage’s VS SOLAR Pro 2: Small, But Unmatched in Efficiency Upstage’s SOLAR Pro 2 was recently highlighted in the Intelligence Index by the independent evaluation gr...