[Interview] '100 Billion Investment from LGU+' FortyTwoMaru "Global Challenge through Advanced Large Language Models"

After LLM Business, Planning B2B Business
Investment Attraction from Hancom and Hana Securities
"Goal Is to Provide SaaS in the Global Market"

The number "42" in the name of the AI-specialized startup "Fortytwo Maru" is derived from the classic modern sci-fi "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." In the book, the supercomputer "Deep Thought" answers the question about "the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything" with "42." This number well represents Fortytwo Maru's identity as a developer of QA (Question Answering) and TA (Text Analytics) platforms that find a single answer from vast unstructured data. The company name, combined with "Maru," meaning mountain peak, reflects the ambition to become the best in the QA field, an idea influenced by CEO Kim Donghwan of Fortytwo Maru. Fortytwo Maru offers a platform service similar to ChatGPT but specialized for enterprise tasks by minimizing errors and enhancing security. Recently, it has attracted attention as an AI startup receiving investments from leading domestic companies such as LG Uplus and Hancom.

CEO Donghwan Kim of 42Maru. Photo by Younghan Heo younghan@

On the 22nd, at Fortytwo Maru's headquarters in Seocho-gu, CEO Kim expressed gratitude regarding LG Uplus's 10 billion KRW equity investment, saying, "While I feel thankful, I also feel like I have received a bigger challenge," and added, "Since the investment was made with trust and for cooperation, we will strive to create synergy effects." CEO Kim and his team are diligently contemplating to find Fortytwo Maru's "42." In collaboration with LG Uplus, Fortytwo Maru will jointly conduct research and development (R&D) of large language models (LLM), as well as work on commercialization and advancement.

LG Uplus's LLM, Ixigen, based on LG Group's super-large AI Exaone, is expected to create synergy with Fortytwo Maru's technologies MRC42 and RAG42. The deep learning-based machine reading comprehension solution MRC42 is a technology that tied for first place with Google's AI team in the global machine reading comprehension (MRC) competition hosted by Stanford University. Simply put, the competition involves presenting questions and evaluating how well each company's technology finds the answers. Although the manpower was less compared to other global companies at the time, experience and know-how in search from Empas and SK Communications played a significant role. CEO Kim said, "We minimized 'hallucination,' which is pretending to know the unknown, thereby improving the accuracy of the LLM."

RAG42 can be seen as a technology that refines the materials used for LLMs. For example, taking ChatGPT, a representative LLM, when requesting answers or summaries, appropriate data or documents must be available to find the answers, and RAG plays the role of refining and inputting these materials. Fortytwo Maru can derive better answers based on the refined data through RAG42.

CEO Donghwan Kim of 42Maru. Photo by Younghan Heo younghan@

CEO Kim mentioned that after the first phase of the LLM business with LG Uplus, they plan to proceed with a second phase focusing on B2B (business-to-business) related projects. This involves transforming internal systems and work environments based on digital transformation (DX) and AI transformation (AX) for enterprises. Their experience in developing enterprise-specialized QA and TA platforms is expected to be a significant asset. Fortytwo Maru has conducted AI projects across all industries, including electronics, telecommunications, shipbuilding and marine, automotive, and finance. For instance, AI handles tasks such as drafting design documents in the shipbuilding industry, checking design consistency, and verifying toxic clauses in legal contracts for the general public.

CEO Kim said, "I once considered retirement because I wanted to do something completely different, but I jumped in because I believe AI is a technology that can change the paradigm of human life," adding, "Even if not LLM, AI technology will be integrated into various aspects of daily life." He continued, "We take pride in our service quality and performance," and noted, "Commercialization is a different matter even with AI technology, but we will lead commercialization based on personnel who have worked for over 20 years at major portals." Additionally, they have secured investment from Hancom and plan to develop an LLM that provides Q&A and summarization within Hancom programs based on Korean documents. They also received follow-up investments from Hana Securities and others.

CEO Kim envisions Fortytwo Maru's "42" in the global market. Although they selected an IPO underwriter since 2020, they believe more effort and time should be devoted to the global market before proceeding and are currently considering the timing. They have launched and are operating a new service called "Site Bunny" in the UK. This service transforms any website into an interactive chatbot, allowing users to find desired information by typing in a chat window without searching multiple sites. They are also reviewing follow-up investments from the global accelerator Techstars. CEO Kim said, "The ultimate goal is not the IPO but global business based on it," and added, "Our goal is to provide B2B and B2C (business-to-consumer) Software as a Service (SaaS) in the global market based on Korean AI technology."

Who is Kim Donghwan, CEO of Fortytwo Maru? He served as head of the search development and planning departments at Empas in 1999, and as head of the search business division at SK Communications in 2007. Since 2015, he has been CEO of Fortytwo Maru. Under his leadership, Fortytwo Maru achieved joint first place with Google's AI team in the MRC competition hosted by Stanford University and has expanded its AI platform across domestic and international industries.