SEOUL, October 23 (AJP) - South Korean artificial intelligence company Upstage announced Thursday the launch of “Shin Pro,” a large language model (LLM) designed specifically for the Japanese market and developed in partnership with Tokyo-based AI firm Karakuri.
Built on Upstage’s proprietary Solar model, Shin Pro is a 31-billion-parameter system fine-tuned for Japanese language nuances and cultural context. The model is optimized for on-premise deployment, offering companies enhanced data security and cost efficiency by allowing them to run AI applications within their own infrastructure.
Shin Pro has already drawn attention for its performance, topping the Weights & Biases Nezumi Leaderboard, a key benchmark for Japanese-language LLMs. It achieved the highest score among models with 31 billion parameters or fewer.
Notably, Shin Pro is the only model developed and trained in Japan to rank among the top performers on the leaderboard — a space otherwise dominated by models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and DeepSeek. Its emphasis on local deployment and data privacy aligns with Japan’s growing preference for on-premise AI solutions over cloud-based alternatives from U.S. and Chinese providers.
“This achievement shows that Upstage’s technology can compete head-to-head with globally trained AI models in Japan,” said Hiroyuki Matsushita, head of Upstage Japan. “With Shin Pro, we aim to help Japanese companies adopt AI that reflects their industry needs, security requirements, and cultural context.”
* This article, published by Aju Business Daily, was translated by AI and edited by AJP.
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