About the challenge

24 hours. 3 tracks. Build AI for the cloud, your desk, and the real world.

About the event

Hack.dev is hosting a 24-hour AI hackathon at UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley, co-hosted with the UCSC GenAI Center and Baskin Engineering. Pick one track, build something that actually works, and demo it live on Sunday.

Choose your own track 

  • Cloud AI · Cisco: multi-agent systems where AI agents collaborate, adapt, and resolve disagreements.
  • Local AI · ASUS: AI that runs fully on the ASUS Ascent GX10, with no cloud needed.
  • Physical AI · AMD: robotics with LeRobot, trained on AMD Radeon Cloud and deployed to the edge.

The Details 

​Who: Open to students of all experience levels. A hacker guide will be shared before the event. You can work in teams of 1-4.

​Food: Fully catered for 24 hours. Energy, caffeine, and meals are on us.

​Title Sponsors: Cisco, AMD, ASUS, GenAI Center, & Baskin School of Engineering.

Requirements

What to Build

Think outside the box. Pick one track and build something real: a polished, intuitive experience on top of solid engineering, with a clear story about who it’s for and why it matters. Most importantly, show off your track’s tech in a way no one else has. 

What to Submit

Your submission needs to be a working project you can demo live at your table. Not a prototype. Not a pitch deck. Something that runs. Make sure to include:

  • Your track and table number
  • A link to your code repository
  • A short demo video or screenshots
  • A short write-up of what it does, how it works, and what you learned!

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$39,085 in prizes
Overall Prize
$11,584 in cash
1 winner

4× MacBook Pro M5, plus 3 months of ElevenLabs Pro ($297 value each) and a 1-year n8n Cloud Pro license ($600 value each) for each team member

Best Beginner
$516 in cash
1 winner

4× AirPods 5

Cloud AI (Cisco):
$2,265 in cash
3 winners

1st 4× iPad Pro · 2nd 4× Nintendo Switch · 3rd 4× Razer Viper V3 Pro

Local AI (ASUS)
$3,134 in cash
3 winners

1st 4× NVIDIA RTX 5080 GPUs · 2nd 4× ROG gaming keyboards · 3rd 4× ZenScreen portable monitors

ASUS Content Challenge
$200 in cash
1 winner

ASUS ZenScreen portable monitor (subject to change)

Best Use of ElevenLabs
$3,588 in cash
1 winner

3 months of the Scale plan for each team member ($897 value each)

Physical AI (AMD)
$3,500 in cash
2 winners

1st $1,000 in compute credits + 4× LeRobot arms · 2nd $500 in compute credits

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Yi Zhang

Yi Zhang
GenAI Center

Judging Criteria

  • Functionality
    Does it work? A live, stable demo of a working project, not a mockup or slides.
  • Creativity & Innovation
    How original is the idea and the approach? Does it use AI in a new or unexpected way?
  • Real-World Impact
    Does it solve a real problem for real people, and would it be useful beyond the hackathon?
  • Technical Depth & Use of Track Technology
    How well does the project use its track’s tools?
  • Presentation
    Clear, engaging, and well-structured presentation that effectively communicates the project core use case, technical depth, and business impact to diverse audiences.

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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Hackathon sponsors

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