Tax AI Startup Hyeum Rebrands as Alfred to Expand Agentic AI Business

South Korean tax AI company Hyeum said it has changed its corporate name to Alfred and will transform into an agentic AI provider supporting personal finance and business operations based on its tax service platform.

The company adopted the new name nearly 10 years after first launching as an in-house IT research lab within Hyeum Tax Accounting Corp. Alfred said it has accumulated more than 50 million tax and consultation data points from 1.2 million business operators over the past decade and has been developing AI agent technologies specialized in finance and taxation.

The new name "Alfred" was inspired by the image of a loyal butler and reflects the company's goal of helping small business owners handle repetitive tasks such as bookkeeping, tax administration and payroll without dedicated professional staff, the company said.

Alfred has expanded into the tax software-as-a-service market by commercializing what it described as the industry's first KakaoTalk-based collaborative AI chatbot. More recently, the company has reorganized its business structure around agentic AI and focused on higher-value AI operations. Alfred said its core AI business division recorded a compound annual growth rate of 256% over the past three years.

The company also highlighted its technological capabilities in financial and tax AI after winning first place in the Ministry of SMEs and Startups' "OpenData × AI Challenge" in February. Alfred is also participating as a financial-sector partner in Upstage's consortium for the government-backed sovereign AI foundation model project.

Meanwhile, Alfred said it is currently advancing and testing agentic AI services targeted for commercialization in the second half of this year. Unlike conventional chatbots focused on responses, the new system is designed to execute actual tasks such as tax filings, customer management and document issuance based on user instructions. The company plans to expand the technology beyond tax services into broader personal finance and business applications.

Alfred added that it will also redesign its internal work systems around AI. The company said it defines AI not merely as a support tool but as an active operational entity, with human employees focusing on assigning tasks, verifying outcomes, strategic planning and decision-making as part of what it described as an "AI-native organization."

"After spending the past 10 years closely observing the real workflows of 1.2 million business operators since starting as a research lab within a tax accounting firm, we concluded that small business owners do not simply need chatbots that provide answers, but colleagues that can actually perform tasks for them," Chief Executive Officer Ok Hyung-seok said.

"Alfred will move beyond conventional tax services to become an agentic AI company that directly carries out users' work and helps small business owners focus on the core of their businesses," he added.