[Big Trend] Start-ups developing their own LLMs in specialised fields such as law and healthcare
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As the government launches the '独自 AI Foundation Model' project to develop a national flagship hyperscale AI model in an effort to secure technological sovereignty in AI (artificial intelligence), there are start-ups that did not participate in this project but are standing out in the LLM (large language model) sector through their own technological capabilities.
The 18 companies belonging to the five teams named on the final list for the 独自 AI Foundation Model project announced by the Ministry of Science and ICT on the 4th include △Upstage △Twelve Labs △Rebellions △Liner △FuriosaAI and △Wrtn Technologies. Although they suffered the bitter disappointment of failing this evaluation, start-ups including △Mathpresso △Tomorrow Robotics △Pebblous and △Junction Med also challenged the project through consortia, expressing confidence in their AI capabilities.
There are also 'hidden champions' that did not apply for this project but are building up differentiated technological capabilities, such as developing their own LLMs. Notable examples include △BHSN (legal) △EveryAI Korea (healthcare) △Miso (home services) △CLEVI (generative AI services) and △42Maru (lightweight LLMs).
They have solved even the difficult 'legal and healthcare' fields
/Graphic by Lim Jong-cheol
Legal tech start-up BHSN recently launched the legal-specialised LLM 'Alibi Astro'. The legal-specialised LLM 'Alibi Astro', recently launched by legal tech start-up BHSN, is particularly noteworthy. Alibi Astro enhanced its expertise through CPT (continued pre-training) based on extensive legislation, case law and policy data. It was trained in the language structures and contexts used in actual legal practice through RLHF (reinforcement learning from human feedback), incorporating the opinions of lawyers and other experts.
It can understand the context of questions, infer logical relationships between documents, and enable AI-powered contract work, while reviewing English EPC construction contracts averaging 100 pages in just one minute. It can build expert-level reasoning, including interpreting clauses and suggesting directions for amendments. Major Korean conglomerates, including CJ CheilJedang and Aekyung Chemical, currently use Alibi Astro in their day-to-day operations.
e1-M, a medical-specialised LLM developed by EveryAI Korea, is also attracting attention. Unlike existing global models, e1 is designed to intuitively understand and reason through the context and nuances of Korean without relying on English-based translation.
It scored 90.78 on ‘KorMedMCQA’, a medical QA benchmark developed by a KAIST research team, outperforming GPT-4o (85.61) and Claude 3.5 (86.51). It was also highly rated for its reasoning ability to comprehensively analyse patient symptoms and test results and even suggest treatment directions.
EveryAI Korea plans to develop industry-specific LLMs, including legal (e1-L) and financial (e1-F) models, in addition to medical models, and to introduce e1-M-based medical AI solutions for use by hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and insurers.
“Why use ChatGPT?”… Low-cost, high-efficiency LLMs
There is also a start-up challenging ChatGPT with a low-cost, high-efficiency LLM. ‘Ivy’, a generative AI service launched by CLEVI, consists of small models created to minimise AI development costs, which are then distilled and combined. It has introduced technology for efficiently managing the development process by applying automated, container-based deployment technology for training nodes (computing resources), and is characterised by significantly reducing service development and operating costs through efficient training pipeline design and optimisation of communication networks between nodes.
Miso, a start-up providing more than 200 home services, including cleaning, moving and home appliance rentals, is also transforming into a technology company by launching the industry’s first LLM-based solution that uses AI to suggest the home services customers need and supports connections with experts. Previously, customers had to search for and request home service categories individually; now, the process has evolved so that customers can discuss the problems they are experiencing, after which AI analyses them and recommends and connects them with the optimal service.
FortyTwoMaru achieved technological differentiation with a highly reliable LLM. Its internally developed ‘LLM42’ is a lightweight LLM optimised for Korean-language environments, characterised by its low-cost structure, high security and broad applicability in industrial settings.
Experts unanimously say that the government should devise a strategy to make these companies the central pillars of the national AI strategy, including not only companies participating in the independent AI Foundation Model Project but also other start-ups. Choi Seong-jin, CEO of the Startup Growth Research Institute, emphasised, “Institutional arrangements must be put in place so that start-ups can stand as central players in AI policy, rather than as mere figureheads,” adding, “The success or failure of an AI superpower depends on start-ups.”
/Graphic by Yoon Seon-jeong
Reporter Choi Tae-beom [email protected]
Source: MoneyToday (Reporter Choi Tae-beom) | https://www.mt.co.kr/future/2025/08/07/2025080518330143511
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