[Future Business Forum] Donghwan Kim, CEO of Forty2Maru, "The Criterion for AI Technology Assessment Depends on Commercialization"

CEO Donghwan Kim Delivers Keynote at Future Enterprise Forum
Topic: 'Strategies for Utilizing Supermassive AI in the AX Era'
"LLM Market Turns into Equipment Competition... Commercialization Cases Are Crucial"

Kim Dong-hwan, CEO of FortyTwoMaru, will share strategies for utilizing large-scale AI in the AI Transformation (AX) era at the Asia Economy Future Enterprise Forum. As AI becomes a crucial technology across all industries, he plans to provide practical insights to companies aiming to apply it. Kim emphasized that the “commercialization of AI technology” will be a key criterion to evaluate AI capabilities.

Kim Dong-hwan, CEO of FortyTwoMaru. Photo by Dongju Yoon doso7@

On the 16th, at the Asia Economy conference room, Kim Dong-hwan, CEO of FortyTwoMaru, stated that the most important ability for AI companies in the AX era is whether they can actually commercialize the AI technology they possess. He said, “If a carpenter builds a house, it’s not just about using the tools well,” adding, “What matters is building a house that is comfortable to live in and visually appealing.” He used AI technology as a metaphor for tools and commercialization as the house.

FortyTwoMaru is a generative AI startup developing QA (Question Answering) and TA (Text Analytics) platforms that find a single correct answer from unstructured data. They developed the deep learning-based machine reading comprehension solution MRC42 and the retrieval-augmented generation technology RAG42. MRC42 tied for first place with Google AI’s team in the global machine reading comprehension (MRC) competition hosted by Stanford University.

The content Kim will discuss in his keynote speech at the Future Enterprise Forum on the 22nd of next month aligns with these topics. Under the theme “Large-scale AI Utilization Strategies in the AX Era,” he plans to introduce AX cases and explain factors to consider when using AI. He noted, “As demand for AI utilization increases in companies, some without proper AI technology are entering the supply side.” He added, “Many companies claim to develop large language models (LLMs), but since LLMs are open source, the market has shifted from competition over technology or ideas to a hardware race where the one who invests more money wins.”

Kim Dong-hwan, CEO of FortyTwoMaru. Photo by Dongju Yoon doso7@

Kim also said that the way to distinguish AI companies with real technology lies in their commercialization cases. Until recently, having LLM technology could be judged by whether they had RAG, but now even that distinction has become unclear. He said, “When asked if there are actual application cases, most will talk about proof of concept (PoC) or benchmark tests (BMT), but these opportunities are offered to many companies,” adding, “What matters is not the proposal content but whether there are cases of actual technology commercialization.”

As Kim emphasized the importance of commercialization, FortyTwoMaru is focusing on building trustworthy cases. After receiving a 10 billion KRW equity investment from LG Uplus this year, they are seeking technical and business cooperation models. The two companies are collaborating in areas such as AICC business, agent services for consultations, and security. Besides LG Uplus, FortyTwoMaru has attracted investments from Hancom, IBK Industrial Bank, and Hana Financial Group. They are also collaborating with Naver and Google.

Based on the accumulated cases, Kim’s goal is to grow FortyTwoMaru into a self-sustaining company. He expressed, “Our goal is to leave a footprint in the global market with AI technology,” and “We aim to achieve business results from the market’s perspective, not just the supplier’s.”