[Featured Stock] Hancom Targets Global Big Tech with AI

Samsung, Naver, NHN Included
Hancom Alliance Launched
Strong Performance on Strategic Investment News

Hancom is showing strong performance. The news of making a strategic investment in the generative artificial intelligence (AI) startup '42Maru' appears to be influencing its stock price. Hancom has launched the ‘Hancom Alliance,’ which includes Naver Cloud, KT Cloud, Fasoo, NHN, Samsung SDS, 42Maru, and Selvas AI. With M&A and expanding partnerships between companies, it aims to compete with big tech companies such as Microsoft (MS).

As of 10:42 a.m. on the 8th, Hancom is trading at 16,570 KRW, up 10.69% from the previous trading day.

Hancom participated in 42Maru’s Series B investment along with LG Uplus and Hana Securities. After establishing a strategic partnership with 42Maru in November last year to build a cooperative relationship for expanding business synergies between the two companies, Hancom is now strengthening its AI technology and competitiveness through this equity investment and is embarking on a full-scale AI business.

Kim Yeonsu, CEO of Hancom, stated, "We will strengthen AI technology through this equity investment and actively provide AI services targeting various market sectors and customers from B2G to B2C. We will expand the AI business further through synergies between the two companies, such as applying it first to Hancom DocumentQA, which will be introduced this year."

42Maru provides AI technology and services through a deep semantic question answering (QA) platform based on deep learning technology. It has over 100 clients including Samsung, LG, SK, Hyundai Kia Motors, and CJ. 42Maru’s lightweight language model (sLLM) ‘LLM42’ and retrieval-augmented generation technology ‘RAG42’ are regarded as advanced forms compared to current search technologies that present multiple candidate answers to user queries.

Hancom plans to combine its electronic document-based technology with 42Maru’s large language model (LLM) technology to train Korean (HWP·HWPX) documents generated and stored by companies and public institutions, and provide various AI services such as question answering, information retrieval, document drafting, summarization, and recommendation.

By combining AI technology with software development kit (SDK) technology, Hancom will apply 42Maru’s sLLM technology to the document-based question answering system ‘Document QA,’ scheduled for release this year. This will enhance work productivity and efficiency for a wide range of customers across business-to-government (B2G), business-to-business (B2B), and business-to-consumer (B2C) sectors.

Earlier, 42Maru collaborated with Naver Cloud to strengthen AI utilization. 42Maru identifies business problems that can be solved by introducing customized AI services based on HyperCLOVA X and provides insight consulting services for LLM adoption strategies. It also offers data structuring and construction, model tuning, service application development, and technical feedback related to HyperCLOVA X.

42Maru developed technology to mitigate the hallucination phenomenon, a drawback of ultra-large language models, through engineering with accuracy-focused AI reading comprehension (MRC)-based QA models. Supporting enterprise private modes, it leads the use of ultra-large AI without concerns about internal data and sensitive customer information leaks, and implements models specialized for professional industrial fields, significantly reducing costs for solution construction, training, and serving.

IBK Investment & Securities analyzed that Hancom’s ‘Hancom Assistant’ is an LLM-based smart document creation engine that assists AI document writing by applying it to Hancom Office or SDK, providing functions similar to Microsoft’s generative AI assistant, Copilot. They explained that by modularizing accumulated document technology into SDKs and offering them to domestic and international AI companies through alliances, Hancom is expected to evolve into an AI platform company. By forming alliances with Samsung SDS, Naver Cloud, KT Cloud, and others, and providing SDKs and document-related solutions, differentiated AI strategies are anticipated through technology integration with partners.

Jung Jihwan, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Hancom, recently stated in an interview with the media, "Hancom aims to join the global big tech companies within five years by advancing the electronic document technology accumulated over more than 30 years, accelerating the expansion of its AI business. We are attempting change centered on Hancom Assistant and Document QA."