Hackathons

Dogathon — AI Valley × PetZen 🐶 A hackathon where every project has a real dog on the other end of it. 200 developers, designers, AI builders, vet techs, and shelter volunteers are coming together to build tools that directly support rescue operations and dog adoption. The day begins with rescue dogs meeting participants on-site. Teams will then spend the rest of the hackathon building products that help shelters, rescues, fosters, adopters, and dogs themselves — from adoption matching tools and volunteer coordination systems to AI copilots for rescue operations. Our rescue partner will be present throughout the event, so anyone who forms a connection with a dog during the morning meet-and-greet can begin the adoption process on-site. Not another demo-day hackathon. Build something that actually helps a living being. 🐾 What to expect: Real rescue dogs on-site Builders, designers, and animal advocates AI + software projects for rescue operations Mentors from tech + pet care Demos, prizes, and adoption opportunities A high-signal, mission-driven community Meet the dogs in the morning. Build for them in the afternoon. The House: !

Bring what you’re building. Find the right people. Move it forward. Move it Forward by Workato and AI Valley is a three-hour working session for founders, engineers, designers, operators, and creators who already have a product, prototype, workflow, or idea in motion. Instead of starting from scratch, you’ll use the evening to make meaningful progress: improve your project, explore new automations with Workato, and meet collaborators who can help you take it further. Come with something concrete. Leave with a stronger project, new connections, and clear next steps. What You’ll Get $1000 in prizes Focused time to improve an existing project Structured introductions to potential collaborators or co-founders Feedback from other serious builders A chance to demo your progress and earn recognition Food, drinks, and access to a curated community No prior Workato experience is required. Just bring a laptop and something you are ready to advance. Sunday, August 16, 6:00–6:30 PM PT — Virtual Introduction Session Meet the other participants, briefly share what you are building, and identify potential collaborators before Monday’s event. Each person will give a short introduction covering their project, event goal, and where they could use support. Workato and AI Valley will also share final preparation details and resources so everyone can arrive ready to build. Format 5:00–5:20 PM — Welcome and Workato Overview See what you can build, connect, and automate with Workato. 5:20–5:45 PM — Project Introductions Share what you are building, where you are stuck, and what support you need. 5:45–6:00 PM — Collaborator Matching Meet people with complementary skills and decide whether to build independently or together. 6:00–7:30 PM — Focused Build Session Improve your project with feedback from the community. 7:30–7:55 PM — Progress Showcase Selected participants share what they built, improved, or discovered. 7:55–8:00 PM — Recognition and Close Standout projects receive prizes, community recognition, and opportunities to join future editions. Bring what you’re building. Find the right people. Move it forward. About Workato Workato is the Enterprise MCP company, providing the connective layer that gives AI agents secure, governed access to enterprise systems and data. Built on a decade of integration expertise spanning 14,000+ applications, Workato enables organizations to move from simple automation to agentic AI that can reason, act, and orchestrate work across the business. About Base44 Base44 is an AI-powered app-building platform that enables anyone to turn an idea into a functional application using natural language. It brings the core pieces of development—including the interface, backend, database, authentication, and integrations—into one place, helping builders move quickly from concept to working product. Community Partner AI Valley is a community for exceptional first-generation builders, founders, and creators. We host high-signal hackathons, workshops, and gatherings where ambitious people find collaborators, mentors, and real opportunities. !

🧋 Boba-thon: Build AI Workflows Over Boba AI Valley × Workato are bringing builders together for an evening of hands-on hacking, AI workflow building, and boba. This is a casual, high-signal build night for engineers, founders, students, and AI builders who want to meet other ambitious people, experiment with new ideas, and ship something small but real. Whether you come with a project, a half-baked idea, or just curiosity, you’ll have time to find teammates, build, get feedback, and connect with other builders in the AI Valley community. Expect boba, good people, and a room full of folks building with AI. What to expect 🛠️ Hands-on building with AI workflows and tools 🧋 Boba from Little Sweet 🤝 Team formation and founder/builder networking 🎤 Short demos at the end of the night 💬 A casual, collaborative space to meet technical builders, founders, and operators Who should come This event is for builders, engineers, founders, designers, students, operators, and anyone excited about building with AI. You do not need to have a finished idea before attending — just bring curiosity and a willingness to build. Schedule 5:00 PM — Doors Open + Check-in Arrive, grab boba, meet other builders, and settle in. 5:30 PM — Welcome + Opening Remarks Quick intro from AI Valley and Workato, overview of the night, and what people can build. 5:45 PM — Team Formation + Idea Jam Meet other attendees, share ideas, and form small teams. 6:15 PM — Build Time Work on your project, prototype an AI workflow, test tools, and get feedback. 7:30 PM — Demos + Shareouts Teams and solo builders share what they built in short, casual demos. 7:50 PM — Wrap-up + Networking Final announcements, photos, and time to connect before the night ends. AI Valley is a community for exceptional first-generation builders, founders, and creators. We host high-signal hackathons, workshops, and gatherings where ambitious people find collaborators, mentors, and real opportunities. !

Z.ai Builder Series · Build with GLM 5.1 GLM 5.1 just dropped. We're inviting developers to build real-world AI use cases using an agent-first model designed for long-horizon reasoning, coding, and multi-step workflows. This is a 1-week async build event focused on shipping real projects. build something real, and have it seen! Selected projects will be featured by Z.ai and shared across the dev ecosystem. ⚡ About GLM 5.1 Z.ai, founded in 2019, is a leading foundation model company behind the GLM series. Its latest model, GLM 5.1, is the undisputed leader in the open-source domain, excelling in long-horizon tasks. With a 50% performance boost over its predecessor GLM-5, it demonstrates engineer-level mastery, achieving results comparable to frontier models in complex, multi-step tasks at 1/7 the cost. 🎁 Rewards 🏆 Grand Prize — $5,000 From Top 3 Awarded to the project with the strongest community engagement: ≥150 reposts + ≥2,000 likes on X (from @zaiorg repost) Authenticity of engagement will be considered. 🟡 Builder Award (Top 5) GLM Max Quarterly Plan (>$15K API value) - By panel of judges 🟠 Showcase Award (Top 3) Featured on Z.ai X & website - Selected from Top 5 by judges 📋 Full rewards & judging details 🌊 Why join Build something you can actually show Get your project in front of real builders and the Z.ai team Be part of the first wave of GLM 5.1 use cases Turn your project into something visible across the X & dev ecosystem 📅 Timeline Mar 30 – Apr 6 Async build · Submit anytime Final winners will be announced on April 9, 2026. 🚀 How to Participate 👉 Full builder guide 👉 Join Discord for discussion, Q&A 🔚 Build something real. Ship it. Make it visible. Community Host AI Valley is a community supporting exceptional first-generation builders, founders, and researchers through curated hackathons, workshops, and gatherings across AI and emerging technology.

🚀 MiniMax MiniHack with Workato — Close Out GTC by Building March 19 · 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM GTC ends. The real ones stay and build. Join us for a co-working style MiniHack powered by MiniMax, featuring MiniMax M2.5 — built for real-world productivity. 🧠 Why M2.5? 80.2% SWE-Bench Verified 76.3% BrowseComp (search + tool use) Architect-style planning before coding 100 tokens/sec throughput ~$1/hour continuous runtime Frontier capability. No frontier pricing. 🌍 About MiniMax MiniMax is a global AI company building frontier multimodal models across LLM, video, audio, and music — powering products used by over 150M users worldwide. The M2 series is designed to enable powerful, production-ready agents without the cost constraints typically associated with frontier models. About Workato Workato is the Enterprise MCP company, providing the connective layer that gives AI agents secure, governed access to enterprise systems and data. Built on a decade of integration expertise spanning 14,000+ applications, Workato's platform enables organizations to move from simple automation to agentic AI that can reason, act, and orchestrate work across the entire business. You can explore Workato's end-to-end capabilities in our developer sandbox here. 🗓 The Flow 5:30 – Arrival + networking 5:45 – Quick M2.5 walkthrough 6:00–8:15 – Build session + Dinner 8:15 – Optional demos No overnight grind. No pitch theater. Just focused builders shipping real things. 🍽️ Food and drinks will be provided. Spots are limited. AI Valley is a community rooted in supporting exceptional first generation builders, founders, and creators. We curate environments where ambitious people meet collaborators, mentors, and opportunities through hackathons, workshops, and intimate gatherings across AI, tech, and the arts. If you care about who you build with as much as what you build, this is your place.

Build the future of Generative AI. Selected teams will be considered for Afore Capital’s pre-seed program ($500k–$2M+). Following the success of Agent Foundry, Return of the Agents is the third and final installment in our trilogy of hackathons — pushing the frontier of generative AI. This exclusive gathering convenes top founders, ambitious developers, and frontier researchers to create venture-scale products. Return of the Agents is a hybrid hackathon - anchored by an in-person build weekend, with remote participation available for select teams. Over one high-energy weekend, 500+ hand-selected builders will design, prototype, and deploy groundbreaking systems — from state-of-the-art image and video generation to multimodal platforms redefining how we create, communicate, and collaborate. Why Afore Capital Afore Capital is a founder-first pre-seed fund known for backing companies at inception—often before a product exists. Their team works closely with builders coming out of hackathons, side projects, and early technical collaborations, helping exceptional teams turn prototypes into enduring companies. Participation in Return of the Agents places teams directly in front of Afore partners, operators, and mentors who actively source and support companies emerging from high-signal technical environments like this one. 🧠 Team Formation & Referrals This year, we’re raising the bar on team quality. Applicants are encouraged to refer their strongest teammates and build with people they trust to ship at a high level. Referrals are tracked directly through your shared luma link - anyone who applies using your link is counted as your referral and evaluated as part of your team. Acceptance decisions increasingly reflect team strength, technical depth, and execution potential, not just individual profiles. It will also holistically increases the likelihood of creating something exceptional for 500k-2M in pre-seed funding. 💡 What to Expect Hands-on technical workshops & mentorship from industry leaders A showcase judged by top investors, operators, and AI experts $5,000 in prizes 🏆 plus recognition & fast-track opportunities into venture-scale products 🎓 For students: Participation may strengthen your application to Afore’s FIR U (Founder-in-Residence University) program → afore.vc/firu This is where the most driven entrepreneurs will launch companies that shape the next era of generative AI. 🔗 More Info 👉 aforehacks.org AI Valley is a community rooted in supporting exceptional first-generation builders, founders, and creators. We curate environments where ambitious people meet collaborators, mentors, and opportunities through hackathons, workshops, and intimate gatherings across AI, tech, and the arts. If you care about who you build with as much as what you build, this is your place.

A competitive four-hour vibecoding sprint where teams build projects and face questioning from YC-backed founders. CMU-SV students only, teams of 2-5. Free pizza, 100 Lovable credits per participant. Winners earn $2,400 in AI platform credits and guaranteed startup interviews.

Following a series of successful community-first hackathons, we’re hosting the largest hybrid AI hackathon for women and nonbinary folks in tech — with in-person attendance in the Bay Area and a fully supported virtual experience. We’re proud to be supported by Replit, Vercel, Daytona, MiniMax, and BEM, helping make this an accessible, high-impact build experience for our community. 💡 What to Expect Hands-on workshops and mentorship from industry leaders and AI practitioners A high-energy demo session judged by top founders, operators, and technologists Prizes, recognition, and opportunities to showcase your work A welcoming, collaborative environment designed to support builders at every stage 🏆 The Grand Prize The winning team will receive a one-of-one, custom-designed jewelry piece by celebrity jeweler Kyle Chan, created exclusively for this hackathon. Kyle Chan’s work has been worn by Beyoncé, featured in La La Land on Emma Stone, and showcased across Vanderpump Rules and RHOBH. The piece is handcrafted in Los Angeles and designed as both a collectible trophy and a lasting symbol of what you built — something you won’t find anywhere else. 🚀 Why Join? Turn ideas into real prototypes, level up your skills, and meet people who genuinely support your growth. Whether this is your first AI project or your tenth, this hackathon is built to inspire, empower, and celebrate women and allies in tech. 🌟 Join us and build what you love — at the Bay Area’s largest women-led AI hackathon.

An invite-only sprint; build the future of AI and Hardware. Selected teams will be considered for Afore Capital’s pre-seed program ($500k–$2M+). Following the success of Agent Foundry and A New Agent, The Droids Strike Back is the second installment in our trilogy of hackathons — pushing the frontier at the intersection of AI and hardware. This exclusive gathering convenes top founders, ambitious developers, and frontier researchers to create venture-scale products. Over one high-energy weekend, 200+ hand-selected builders will design, prototype, and deploy systems that combine AI with robotics and hardware integrations — from embodied AI agents to next-generation robotic platforms to state of the art simulations. Or continue building AI systems and software if hardware is not your forte. 💡 What to Expect Hands-on technical workshops & mentorship from industry leaders A showcase judged by top investors, operators, and AI experts $5,000 in prizes 🏆 plus recognition & fast-track opportunities into venture-scale products This is where the most driven entrepreneurs will launch companies that shape the future of AI and robotics. 🔗 More Info 👉 aforehacks.org

Build the next generation of venture-backed AI companies. Selected teams will be considered for Afore Capital’s pre-seed program ($500k–$2M+) and top applicants will be invited to an exclusive dinner with top founders and Afore Capital the night before.

CMU-SV Hackathon 2025 🚀 Carnegie Mellon University – Silicon Valley invites students to a day of innovation, collaboration, and creativity. On Friday, Oct. 3 (11:00 AM – 7:00 PM), join us in CMIL (front & back) for a high-energy hackathon where CMU-SV students and alumni come together to build, learn, and showcase their ideas. Whether you’re passionate about AI, software engineering, or creative problem-solving, this is your chance to collaborate with peers, tackle challenges, and present your work to industry judges and recruiters. 📍 Location: CMU-SV, CMIL Front & Back 🕚 Time: 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM 🥗 Meals Provided: Lunch at 12:00 PM | Dinner at 6:00 PM 💡 What to Expect: A full day of hacking, prototyping, and pitching Networking opportunities with recruiters and judges Space to collaborate across 7 reserved conference rooms A welcoming environment designed to spark new ideas, friendships, and career connections ✨ Note: This event is open to CMU-SV students and select alumni. Recruiters are welcome to attend and network throughout the day.

🛠️ The Dumb Hackathon Hosted by AI Valley X Pebblebed.com Build the dumbest thing you can imagine. Seriously. This is not your typical “change the world” hackathon — it’s the opposite. Spend a day creating gloriously useless projects, meeting fellow chaos-makers, and celebrating the joy of building for fun. If it makes people laugh, groan, or wonder why on earth did you make this? — you’re doing it right. ⚡️ New this time: We’re also hosting a Performative Male Contest at the hackathon. So come dressed as your most performative self and be ready to compete for a special sponsor prize at 2 PM. 🤝 With Support From Our Sponsors Google — Powering innovation and creativity with tools and platforms that enable builders everywhere. ElevenLabs — ElevenLabs is an AI audio research and deployment company on a mission to make content universally accessible in any language and voice. We develop advanced AI models that generate realistic, versatile, and contextually aware speech, voices, and sound effects across 32 languages, tailoring them for everyday users, creators, and enterprises. Our technology and agents platform power a wide range of applications, from voicing audiobooks to aiding medical training. elevenlabs.io Morph — Morph is coding agent middleware that makes LLMs practical for agentic coding by powering fast, reliable, high-throughput code edits and retrieval in large codebases. morphllm.com Toolhouse.ai — Toolhouse is a Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) that lets you build, run, and manage AI agents. It simplifies turning agents defined as code into production APIs, and includes features like RAG, memory, observability, and prompt optimization. toolhouse.ai Ministry of Programming — A venture builder and product development studio that has helped launch 200+ startups worldwide. ministryofprogramming.com VAPI — VAPI provides an open platform for building, deploying, and scaling AI voice agents. Developers can create natural, real-time conversational agents with low-latency streaming, integrations, and production-ready infrastructure. vapi.ai A1Base — At A1Base, we’re building the next big messaging platform with A1Zap. We rethink what great and useful interactions are with friends, tasks, life, work and more - but with an eye on how to make it all better with AI. We let you quickly build an agent that can chat with friends/groups on our app, or in email, whatsapp and sms. A1Base 🏆 The Grand Prize The winning team will take home a rare Labubu, custom-made with hand-set diamonds and pearls by celebrity jeweler Kyle Chan. Kyle’s designs have been worn by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Emma Stone in La La Land, and he was recently profiled by the New York Times as “the unofficial jeweler to the stars” — read the article here. Follow his latest creations on Instagram:@kylechandesign 💡 About our Venue Host: Pebblebed.com Pebblebed is a technical early-stage VC founded by some of the most influential builders in AI and tech: Pam Vagata — Cofounder of OpenAI, led AI at Stripe, inventor of FBLearner Flow Keith Adams — Founded Facebook AI Research, Chief Architect at Slack, 20th engineer at VMWare Luke Byrne — Former Partner at Tapestry Tammie Siew — Former Sequoia Southeast Asia investor, Sequoia & GGV-backed founder 🚀 Backed by this powerhouse team, Pebblebed is shaping the next wave of AI and frontier tech. 👉 Learn more at stupid-hackathon-roan.vercel.app 👉 Community page: aivalley.io

Agent Foundry – August 23, 2025 An invite-only, founder-focused sprint where 200 of the brightest developers, researchers, and AI innovators build venture-scale products with AI agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP). Designed for exceptional talent ready to launch the next wave of AI-driven startups. Selected participants will also have the chance to be considered for Afore Capital’s pre-seed program, investing $500k–$2M+ in exceptional founders.

Join us for a weekend of innovation where we challenge you to rethink how workflows are built—with intelligence, adaptability, and autonomy. Whether you're streamlining operations or crafting agent-powered assistants, this is your chance to shape how the world works. 🧠 Tracks: 1. Agentic Workflows – Build autonomous agents that think, act, and execute 2. LLM-Powered Workflows – Put LLMs in the driver’s seat of your workflow. 3. Wildcard Track – Design beautiful, intuitive workflow interfaces. (perfect for frontend wizards!) All skill levels welcome. Builders, designers, and dreamers alike. Prizes will be announced during the event, but expect more than $10k+ in value.

🎉 AI Valley Hackathon — For Students, By Students 🗓️ April 19–20 | 2-Day Hackathon Get ready for a 2-day AI Hackathon powered by students from Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley — where the best student builders, engineers and founders from across the bay will come together to invent, compete, and connect. Whether you’re an AI expert or just curious to explore the frontier, this is your chance to form a team of up to 4, dive into real-world challenges, and present your work in front of VCs, startup founders, and engineers from top AI companies. 🧠 About the Hackathon This hackathon will focus on AI Agents & Applied Intelligence, and our sponsors Solana, Trae, and Gru.ai will bring industry-grade challenges for teams to tackle. Think automation, personalization, LLMs, and next-gen user experiences. Challenges will be announced at the start of the Hackathon. 🤝 About Our Sponsors & Supporters Trae - a brand new intelligent collaborative AI IDE that flexibly adapts to your needs in different scenarios. You can work closely with AI throughout the development process, enhancing each other to achieve outstanding results in a faster and more efficient manner. Gru.ai - a startup building coding agents and has topped the SWE-bench verified leaderboard twice. Recently, gru.ai open-sourced gru-sandbox), which is an open-source project providing a self-hostable sandbox for MCP integration or other AI agent use cases. Solana Foundation - a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the growth, development, and security of the Solana blockchain ecosystem. Based in Switzerland, it funds and supports initiatives around decentralized applications, developer tools, infrastructure, and community building. EntreConnect – A founder-first community built to empower entrepreneurs. We envision a community where founders come together to navigate the entrepreneurial journey. By sharing experiences and overcoming challenges, we harness the power of collaboration, innovation, and support to drive success and growth. 👉 Sign up here to secure exclusive early access 💌 and join a community that empowers your entrepreneurial spirit! 🔗 Learn more at entreconnect.us LanceDB: Database for Multimodal AI. Designed from the ground up for AI to store and query all of your data from embeddings to text, images, audio, and video. LanceDB delivers blazing fast retrieval on billions of vectors from object storage, accelerates training or fine-tuning, and supports distributed pre-processing for petabyte-scale multimodal datasets. Sign up for LanceDB Cloud cloud.lancedb.com 📅 Agenda Sneak Peek: CLICK HERE FOR A GENERAL FAQ --> FAQ Saturday 🕘 8:30 AM – Registration & Breakfast 🎤 10:00 AM – Welcome + Kickoff 👥 10:30 AM – Teaming & Hacking Begins 🍛 12:00 PM – Lunch 🧠 1:00 PM – Workshops (Tejas Chopra — Netflix, Suresh Bysani — Eightfold, Gary Qi — Trae, Tan Li — Gru.ai, Lu Qiu — LanceDB) 🍪 2:30 PM – Snack Break 💻 3:00–6:00 PM – Hacking Time 🍜 6:00 PM – Dinner 💻 7:00 PM – Late-night hacking Sunday ☕ 9:00 AM – Breakfast 💻 9:00 AM–11:45 AM – Final Stretch of Hacking 📣 11:45 AM – Notes from Organizers 🥖 12:00 PM – Lunch 🚀 3:14 PM – Final Push (GitHub Submission Deadline) 🎪 3:45 PM – Hackathon Fair 🏆 5:30 PM – Finalist Pitches & Deliberation 🎤 6:30 PM – Awards + Closing 🏆 Prizes: $3K+, $20k OpenAI/Gemini credits (More to be announced) Expect a mix of cash, sponsor swag, and career-boosting exposure 👀 💰 Up to $300K in pre-seed funding is on the table for standout teams ready to build beyond the hackathon 🚀 🎯 Potential internship opportunities with sponsoring companies and partners for top participants 🔍 ✨ Why You Should Join: Free food & swag Build with top CS/AI students Showcase your skills to real startup leaders & investors Potential internships or offers Hands-on experience with real AI challenges 📅 Important Dates 📌 Apply solo or with a team by April 17th ✅ Acceptances sent on a rolling basis — apply early to secure your spot! 📍 Location details will be shared upon acceptance Got questions? Email us at vsuortiz@andrew.cmu.edu 🚀 Let’s redefine what’s possible with AI — see you in April!