On October 26, 2025, hundreds of enthusiasts from around the globe will take part in the largest remote AI hackathon with a single goal in mind — to create a revolutionary, practical AI product.
For 48 hours, tightly-knit teams and obsessed solo builders will lock themselves in and work relentlessly to turn the boldest SaaS ideas into reality. They will choose from four categories: “Autonomous Agents” for those building the individual workers of the future, “Generative Models” for those aiming to elevate human creativity to new heights, “Personal Intelligence” for those striving to create tools that can solve people’s most pressing problems, and “AI for the Next Billion Users” for innovators and industry reinventors.
Why do so many beginners and professionals gather in one place to participate in the same event? Well, one of the advantages of generative AI hackathons is the opportunity to meet like-minded people. Whether you are looking for a technical co-founder, a product visionary, a business strategist, or just a partner with whom you can have fun and create something interesting, hackathons bring together people from all over the world with shared ambitions and diverse experiences. Such interdisciplinary collaboration is increasingly encouraged, and teams often include not only engineers, but also designers, business strategists, and experts in various fields.
The second advantage is undoubtedly the ability to accelerate development. It has now become commonplace for experienced ML engineers to assemble teams of up to four people and, working together to orchestrate AI agents, achieve unprecedented speeds of development and product shipment. But it’s not only AI/ML engineers who are invited to participate. Vibe coders, designers, non‑tech founders with product experience, analysts, and anyone passionate about creating with AI are welcome to join and form their own teams. And if the project turns out to be among the best, any difficulties with further development will be resolved by our mentors within the mentoring program. Mentoring is an extremely important aspect of generative AI hackathons. At ai4hack, mentors are industry experts, company founders, and scientists who provide guidance on technical and business issues.
The main benefit of hackathons is, of course, for the winners. They have a chance to receive $25K in early-stage funding for their product from partner funds, provided they meet the selection criteria. In addition, the winning teams will get mentorship from industry experts at Google, DeepMind, Anthropic, and Waymo, as well as direct access to investors — offering a shortcut from an MVP built in two sleepless nights to a market-ready product.
What can builders do to improve their odds of success? To do this, they need to understand what judges pay attention to.
- Team assessment: Experience and technical expertise.
- Product clarity: Clear definition of the problem being solved, the product’s target audience, and a convincing demonstration with supporting evidence.
- Market potential: Clear go-to-market plan.
Speed of task completion: Evidence of rapid build-test cycles during the hackathon.
Regardless of the results of the hackathon, the main thing you will gain is invaluable experience in creating a working product from scratch. The valuable skills acquired along this thorny path will help you when applying for a job or starting your own startup, and the people you worked with and got to know will become long-term partners and colleagues.
Stepan Fedorov, ex-SRE Team Lead at Unlimint — a global fintech company that scaled its services to millions of users across multiple continents — underscores the transformative impact of hackathons on professional and entrepreneurial growth. Having led large engineering teams and supported early-stage founders, Fedorov shares why industry leaders consider hackathons essential for building future expertise:
“For anyone starting their journey as an ML engineer or AI entrepreneur, hackathons are more than just competitions — they are accelerators of expertise. The ability to rapidly test hypotheses, solve complex technical problems under pressure, work in cross-functional teams, and present solutions to an international audience are skills that define future leaders in technology”.
The application deadline is limited. Join the most interesting community of founders now at ai4hack.com