[AI Revolution](167) Kim Donghwan, CEO of FortyTwoMaru: "Expertise Over All-Rounders... Accelerating AX with Vertical AI"

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"We are focusing on vertical (specialized) artificial intelligence (AI), not general-purpose AI. Our goal is to support companies in achieving successful AI transformation (AX) so they can secure a larger share of their markets."

Kim Donghwan, CEO of FortyTwoMaru, said in an interview with Asia Economy on September 2, "In a situation where companies will inevitably fall behind if they do not adopt AI, we aim to accelerate AX through technically advanced vertical AI."

Kim Donghwan, CEO of FortyTwoMaru, is being interviewed by Asia Economy. Photo by Yoon Dongju

FortyTwoMaru, a company specializing in generative AI, possesses not only large language models (LLMs) but also retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology, which mitigates hallucinations, and machine reading comprehension (MRC) technology. Under the vision of "finding answers to all questions in the world," the company aims to overcome the limitations of reliability and verification issues inherent in AI. It became the first startup globally to tie for first place with the Google AI team in an international MRC competition.

However, despite having its own AI foundation model, FortyTwoMaru did not participate in the so-called "national AI" competition. While the company acknowledges the importance of sovereign AI, it places greater emphasis on leveraging it for AX.

Kim explained, "It is true that, due to the aftermath of China's DeepSeek, there is currently too much focus on AI foundation models. Since both the United States and China are actively pursuing AX, I thought we should also create real value by utilizing these models." He added, "Even with government support, developing a model would take two to three years, during which AI will continue to evolve, and if the paradigm shifts, previous versions will become obsolete. That's why we decided to prioritize AX. Not having an engine has never stopped anyone from building a car."

He cited security sectors such as diplomacy and national defense, as well as education, as areas where sovereign AI is essential. "If AI is not internalized, we risk data leaks, price hikes, and service interruptions, which could even undermine our negotiating power," he said. "For now, using cheap foreign solutions may boost productivity, but once the battle for hegemony is over and costs rise, we will have no other choice but to pay higher prices unless we are willing to sacrifice productivity."

He continued, "In education, elementary school students are already interacting with ChatGPT as if it were a playmate. Eventually, with added learning functions, it will essentially serve as a nanny at home. In such a structure, there is a high risk of ideological and cultural dominance, so I believe that for cultural and humanities-related areas, we must use domestic AI."

Nevertheless, between general-purpose and vertical sovereign AI, FortyTwoMaru has chosen vertical. He compared it to hiring talent: ultimately, you must choose the expert who scores almost perfectly in a specific field, even if they lack other skills, over a jack-of-all-trades who scores 85 points in everything. Kim said, "Vertical AI requires less time and money and offers higher accuracy compared to general-purpose AI. I am particularly interested in blueprint design for manufacturing engineering, which requires building models from scratch, and in climate tech, which has become a major social issue."

He stressed that society needs to prepare for changes in the school education system and retraining in response to AX. The fear that AI will replace jobs has already become reality. Not only simple, repetitive work but also jobs requiring specialized expertise are now at risk, as AI is becoming capable of handling complex tasks and responding to exceptional situations.

FortyTwoMaru is no exception. Since the beginning of this year, the number of employees has decreased from about 80 to around 60. Kim said, "We have improved efficiency by adopting AI. AI now handles not only coding but also debugging to verify the code. We are currently introducing AI into human resources, general affairs, finance, and accounting, and I expect that within three years, 80% of our staff will be AI."

He said, "Since this will happen across all industries, it is crucial for society to ensure a smooth transition, but I feel that preparations are insufficient. We need to move away from simply finding answers and start learning coding skills and developing logical thinking to derive meaningful answers through AI, starting from education."