42Maru Targets Saudi AI Partnerships

Agentic AI startup 42Maru announced on Aug. 31 that it will accelerate its penetration into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) market, including Saudi Arabia, through the ‘K-Tech Service SME and Startup Saudi Partnership Building Support Program’ hosted by the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency (hereinafter KOSME).

This project, promoted by the KOSME Riyadh Global Business Center (GBC), is a program that supports promising domestic tech SMEs and startups in technology-based innovative service sectors, such as AI, in establishing local partnerships in Saudi Arabia and expanding their market entry. Selected companies are provided with a one-stop service for the entire local entry process, including entry strategy consulting linked to Saudi Vision 2030, localization support, potential partner discovery and 1:1 matching, partnership agreement support, and connection to moving into the Saudi Global Business Center (GBC).

In response to Saudi Arabia’s strong data sovereignty policy stance and corporate AI transformation (AX) demand, 42Maru plans to supply its domain-specific lightweight language model ‘LLM42’ and high-precision retrieval-augmented generation solution ‘RAG42’ in On-Premise and Private Cloud methods. Both products can operate independently even in a closed network environment where external networks are completely blocked, possessing unrivaled competitiveness that structurally satisfies the security standards of the National Cybersecurity Authority (NCA) of Saudi Arabia and the data localization requirements of the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA). By combining agentic functions capable of autonomous task execution, the company will introduce an end-to-end agentic AI work environment that goes beyond simple question-answering to encompass document review and workflow automation, actively targeting government departments and public institutions where information security is the top priority, as well as major corporate markets in the finance, energy, and manufacturing sectors that require real-time utilization of vast unstructured data.

Through this program, 42Maru will develop its business centering on core demand sources with strict data sovereignty and security requirements, such as Saudi government departments, public institutions, and state-owned enterprises in the energy and petrochemical sectors. In particular, the local network and practical experience accumulated so far are expected to be utilized as significant assets. 42Maru has already successfully conducted AX (AI transformation) consulting for the construction sector of Saudi Arabia’s NEOM ‘The Line’ through a joint project with Naver Cloud in 2024, establishing a deep understanding of the local ordering process.

Furthermore, as part of a mid-term strategic partnership, the company is exploring the possibility of cooperation with the national AI platform ecosystem led by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia. Under KOSME’s support, 42Maru plans to review a cooperative model that combines its high-precision RAG42 and MRC42 technologies with the national AI platform encompassing public and corporate infrastructure across Saudi Arabia, and will focus on discovering local SI partners and winning projects by actively utilizing KOSME’s follow-up management, such as the connection to moving into the Riyadh GBC.

The agentic AI startup 42Maru is leading the market for ‘acting AI’ that designs and completes complex work processes on its own. Based on unrivaled original technologies represented by retrieval-augmented generation (RAG42), machine reading comprehension (MRC42), and domain-specific lightweight models (LLM42), its strength lies in perfectly controlling the hallucination phenomenon, which is a limitation of hyper-scale AI. In particular, it supports cost-effective industrial and public AX innovation through a highly secure private mode and enterprise optimization.

42Maru CEO Donghwan Kim emphasized, “The Middle East market, including Saudi Arabia, has a policy environment that prioritizes data sovereignty and security, making it a market that structurally aligns with 42Maru, which possesses an on-premise native architecture that operates independently in closed networks,” adding, “Using this KOSME support program as a stepping stone, we will quickly materialize local partnerships and expand our business opportunities throughout the MENA region, starting with Saudi Arabia.”