42 Maru

About 42 Maru

42Maru is an artificial intelligence deep tech company that provides a Deep Semantic Question Answering (QA) platform. Founded in 2015 by D.K. Donghwan Kim, Jerry Wootae Jeong, and Leo Hyunok Kim, the Seoul-based startup aims to deliver a single, specific answer from large sets of unstructured data by understanding the user's true intent. The name "42Maru" is inspired by the number "42," the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything in the science fiction book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

The founders, known as the “Search Mafia” in South Korea, have over 20 years of experience in the search industry, including developing a search engine at SK Communications Nate that outperformed Google in the local market. CEO D.K. Donghwan Kim previously served as the Chief Director of the Search Division at SK Communications and Head of the Search Department at Empas. This extensive background in search technology and natural language processing (NLP) laid the groundwork for 42Maru's focus on developing advanced AI algorithms to overcome challenges in the field.

The company's core technology is a SaaS-based deep semantic QA platform called 'Answering AI'. This platform utilizes a combination of technologies, including Machine Reading Comprehension (MRC), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), and paraphrasing techniques. Its MRC engine allows the system to read and comprehend text like a human, while the NLU technology helps in understanding the user's intent regardless of how a question is phrased. The platform is designed to be language and domain agnostic, offering flexibility across different geographies and business applications. Products built on this platform include QA42, an AI-based question-answering solution; CHAT 42, a conversational AI chatbot; and NL42, a natural language processing technology. More recently, the company developed LLM42, a downsized large language model specialized for professional industrial fields, which has received certifications for its reliability and security.

42Maru serves large enterprises and application providers across various sectors, including finance, telecommunications, automotive, and engineering. Clients like LG U+, Kia Motors, KT Telecom, and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering have used 42Maru's solutions for AI-based chatbots, smart speakers, document comparison, and internal help desks. The business model is primarily a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.

Since its inception, 42Maru has achieved significant milestones, including being the first Korean AI startup selected for the Techstars London accelerator program. The company ranked first jointly with Google's AI team in the SQuAD 2.0 global machine reading comprehension competition hosted by Stanford University. 42Maru has raised a total of $9.27M over 5 funding rounds from investors including the Korean Development Bank, Spring Camp (a Naver-affiliated venture capital), and Hana Financial Group.