First Penguin by Korea Credit Guarantee Fund
A first penguin is an enterprise that boldly takes on challenges despite current uncertainties
QA (Question-Answer) Artificial Intelligence startup 42Maru (CEO Kim Dong-hwan) announced that it is selected the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund’s “First Penguin” program in the last 23rd of March 2020.
The Credit Guarantee Fund's First Penguin Program is a support system for leading companies that challenge new fields with creative ideas and skills, such as the First Penguin, which leads the penguins to jump into the dangerous seas first, followed by other penguins.
This is the best start-up program to support up to 3 billion won for 3 years to companies selected through strict screening standards for business competitiveness such as entrepreneurship, creativity, technology, and future growth.
42Maru is an artificial intelligence startup that develops and services the “Deep Semantic QA Platform”. “Deep semantic QA platform” is a technology that accurately understands the intention of a user’s question and delivers a single correct answer from a massive unstructured data set. It is advanced technology than existing search technology that delivers a list of answers. 42Maru built ‘Deep Semantic QA Platform’ with technologies such as deep learning-based “NLU(Natural Language Understanding) Engine”, “Paraphrasing Engine” to detect and expand analogous expressions, and global top standard of the “MRC(Machine Reading Comprehension) Engine”.
These created ideas and technologies were first recognized abroad.
42Maru co-ranked No. 1 with Google in Squad 2.0 (SQuAD2.0) the world’s most prestigious Machine Reading Comprehension competition in November 2018, competing with Microsoft, IBM, Alibaba, and other global companies.
Also, it has been established itself as a leading company in the field of Natural Language Artificial Intelligence by selected and invested by ‘Techstars London’ program which is the biggest accelerator in Europe, received Innovation award by KGCCI (Korean German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, selected by Samsung C-lab Outside and receiving Grand Tips 2019 award, GSIP Minister Award.
42Maru is also applying the ‘Deep Semantic QA platform’ in various industries, such as Finance, Automotive, Telecom, Shipbuilding and etc. It applied in ‘Pepper’ the Softbank AI robot, SK Innovation’s recruitment Chatbot, Kia Motor’s AI-based Unmanned test drive service. In addition, its technical excellence is recognized by applying in Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering’s ‘AI-based shipbuilding sales support design system’ and LG U+’s ‘Smart kids watch’.
“We are in progress in collaboration with global companies based on an innovative and unique technology, and with this first penguin selection, we will do the best to become a global technology scale-up company as Korea's AI startup,” said D.K. Donghwan Kim, CEO of 42Maru.
Referrals: Chosun [KR]
