Overview
- Both companies’ boards approved a nonbinding memorandum of understanding on Jan. 29 for a stock-for-stock transaction.
- The proposed structure would give Upstage full ownership of AXZ while Kakao would receive a minority stake in Upstage.
- Financial terms were not disclosed, though investment banking sources reported an approximate valuation of 200 billion won.
- Upstage plans to convert decades of Daum user content, including Tistory blogs and Daum Cafe posts, into training data for its Solar LLM under a national foundation model effort.
- Kakao continues to streamline legacy operations after formally separating Daum into AXZ on Dec. 1, 2025, while Upstage is preparing for a potential IPO as early as the second half of 2026 following a prior 740 billion won private valuation.