Hancom Makes Strategic Investment in AI Startup 'Fortytwo Maru'

Hancom announced on the 8th that it will make a strategic investment in the generative artificial intelligence (AI) startup 'Fortytwo Maru'.

This investment by Hancom is part of Fortytwo Maru's Series B funding round, which also includes LG Uplus and Hana Securities. Since establishing a strategic partnership with Fortytwo Maru in November last year to expand business synergies between the two companies, Hancom is now strengthening its AI technology and competitiveness through this equity investment and embarking on a full-scale AI business expansion.

Fortytwo Maru provides differentiated AI technologies and services through the development of a deep semantic QA (Question Answering) platform based on deep learning technology. Over 100 clients, including Samsung, LG, SK, Hyundai Kia Motors, and CJ, use Fortytwo Maru's AI solutions.

Fortytwo Maru's lightweight language model (sLLM) ‘LLM42’ and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology 'RAG42' are characterized by enabling AI to semantically understand the intent of queries through natural language processing and extract accurate information from vast amounts of data.

Hancom plans to combine its accumulated electronic document-based technology with Fortytwo Maru's large language model (LLM) technology to train on Korean documents generated and stored by enterprises and public institutions, providing various AI services such as question answering, information retrieval, document drafting, summarization, and recommendation.

Additionally, by combining AI technology with software development kit (SDK) technology, Hancom will apply Fortytwo Maru's sLLM technology to the document-based question answering system 'Document QA', scheduled for release this year.

Kim Yeonsu, CEO of Hancom, said, "With this equity investment as a turning point, we will strengthen our AI capabilities and actively provide AI services targeting various market sectors and customers from B2G to B2C. We will expand our AI business further through synergies between the two companies, including early application to Hancom Document QA, which will be launched this year."