[Digital Today reporter Seulgi Son] Agentic AI startup 42Maru said on Aug. 31 it will push into Saudi Arabia and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) market through the "K-Tech Service SME Saudi Partnership Building Support Project" run by the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency.

The programme, promoted by the agency's Riyadh Global Business Center (GBC), supports Korean small and medium-sized venture companies in building local partnerships in Saudi Arabia and entering the market in technology-based innovative services such as AI.

Selected companies will receive consulting on entry strategies linked to Saudi "Vision 2030," localisation support, identification and matching of potential partners, support for partnership agreements and links to moving into the Riyadh GBC.

42Maru plans to supply its domain-specific lightweight language model "LLM42" and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) solution "RAG42" through on-premise and private-cloud deployments, targeting Saudi data sovereignty and security policies and corporate demand for AI transformation (AX).

The company explained that the solutions can run even on closed networks separated from external networks, making them applicable to government and public institutions and industries with high security requirements such as finance, energy and manufacturing.

It also plans to target local companies' demand for business automation by combining agentic AI functions that perform document review and workflow automation.

42Maru plans to pursue local partner discovery and project orders, viewing Saudi government and public institutions and state-owned companies in the energy and petrochemicals sectors as key sources of demand.

Earlier, 42Maru participated in an AX consulting project in 2024 for the construction division of Saudi NEOM's "The Line" together with Naver Cloud.

It also plans to explore the possibility of cooperation with an AI ecosystem pursued by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund (PIF). 42Maru plans to use the agency's support to find local systems integration (SI) partners and review ways to apply RAG42 and its machine reading comprehension technology "MRC42" to local AI platforms.

42Maru CEO Donghwan Kim (김동환) said, "As Saudi Arabia and the Middle East market place importance on data sovereignty and security, demand is large for on-premise technology that operates independently in closed networks." He added, "Using this support programme as an opportunity, we will flesh out local partnerships and expand business opportunities across the MENA region."