Agentic AI startup Fortytwo Maru said on Thursday it will work with the Army Logistics Command on an artificial intelligence transformation, or AX, in the defence logistics field.

Fortytwo Maru said it signed a multi-party memorandum of understanding in Daejeon with the Army Logistics Command, the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA), the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) and DataMaker. The MOU aims to carry out the AHIA project, a future defence bridge research and development programme, and establish a mutual cooperation framework.

The agreement goes beyond cooperation on developing AHAI, a generative AI system specialised for logistics. It aims to build a long-term cooperation framework covering maintenance, infrastructure operations and performance upgrades.

The five institutions will cooperate to realise AX in the logistics field based on their respective expertise. The Army Logistics Command will oversee operation of the AHAI system and support cooperation and pilot projects to expand its use and upgrade it, as well as broaden defence AI systems. KIDA will support cooperation on analysing and using defence data, as well as pilot tests and evaluations to upgrade the AHAI system. KISTI will support model development and performance improvement technologies using AI training infrastructure, and DataMaker will handle data refinement and quality management to upgrade functions.

Fortytwo Maru will carry out model development and upgrades for the generative AI system, the core of this cooperation framework. It plans to build a logistics-focused model that can learn and answer using logistics data, centered on retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, technology based on a defence-specialised large language model.

Fortytwo Maru CEO Dong-hwan Kim (김동환) said, "As seen in Claude Mythos, defence sovereign AI through development of specialised foundation models is an urgent and important issue, comparable to cyber nuclear weapons." He added, "Through this agreement, we will bring together public, private and military capabilities to lead South Korea's defence AI and make a practical contribution to strengthening readiness to support military power."