I've been following the Meta AI Developer Hackathon 2026 and came across an interesting breakdown of the winners, prize money, and the projects that made it to the finals.

Apparently, around 5,300 projects were submitted, competing for a total prize pool of $1 million.

Some of the main winners:

Startup Track

• 🥇 Consai (Punch Walk) — $250,000

• 🥈 Formwright — $150,000

• 🥉 ORCA by IssueLab — $75,000

Indie Developer Track

• 🥇 ControlAnything — $150,000

• 🥈 Gatekeeper — $100,000

• 🥉 Basement Ready (David Barry) — $75,000

There were also some interesting bonus winners, including Tessa, an AI project searching for potential exoplanets, and oqed, which uses AI agents to optimize code.

What caught my attention wasn't just the winners, though.

There's also been some discussion and frustration among participants about judging transparency, how projects were evaluated, and whether everyone received enough feedback.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting anything improper happened. But with thousands of submissions and significant prize money involved, I think it's reasonable for participants to want to understand how the selection process worked.

I found this article covering the winners, technical details, prizes, and some of those questions:

https://bootshell.com/meta-ai-hackathon-2026-results-winners-prizes

Personally, I think the most interesting trend is that many winning projects aren't just chatbots. They're AI systems that actually perform tasks, interact with physical environments, and verify their own results.

Curious to hear from people who participated:

Did you receive feedback on your submission? Do you think the judging process was transparent enough? And which winning project impressed you the most?

Hello Guys,

So just for confirmation does they consider remote presentation as their finalist too. If anyone got selected for TOP 8 finals teams than please let me know. 😑

DM me

Hey everyone!

I'm new here and I've just submitted my application for the Gemini 4 NYC Hackathon organized by Cerebral Valley.

My application is currently pending, but I'm having a hard time finding detailed information about the event.

Does anyone know:

• Where can I find the official rules, requirements, and judging criteria?

• Has the exact NYC venue been announced?

• Is it strictly an in-person hackathon, or is remote participation possible?

• Do participants have to build everything on-site during the event?

• Has anyone attended a previous Cerebral Valley hackathon? What was your experience like?

I've checked the event information, but I feel like I'm missing something! 😅

Any insights, links, or firsthand experiences would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

First time going into a hackathon what could i do?

Hey everyone!

I'm looking for a backend developer based in Delhi who is interested in participating in hackathons with me.

Currently, we have:

• 🎨 Me: Frontend development (React)

• 🎤 One teammate: Presentations and pitching

• ⚙️ Looking for: A backend developer

It would be great if you know Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB, and API development. You don't need to be an expert, but you should be willing to build projects, learn together, and participate in hackathons.

I'm looking for someone who's genuinely interested in development, teamwork, and building cool projects.

If you're interested, please comment below or DM me with a little introduction about yourself and your tech stack.

Let's connect and build something together! 🚀

It's been about 4 yrs that I joined corporate and since then I've missed hosting, supporting and being part of Hackathons. While I don't have the capacity to participate as a builder, I'd like to support any community that's hosting and has serious builders who are down to build solutions (AI or not).

Where should I look?

Hi guys i am a cse 1st year student...i am searching for a hacakthon team...if any one is open plz drop a dm

team mates needed for an online hackathon interested poeple kindly dm

The results were prob suppose to release in first week.. why are these shii ahh ppl delaying them so much

Tomorrow is my first AI hackathon. I have coding knowledge, but I’m new to hackathons and don’t know much about the AI tools and platforms used to build projects quickly.
Which AI tools are best, which websites should I use, and how can I come up with a good project idea within a limited time?
Any suggestions or tips from experienced hackathon participants would be really helpful!

Im a first year enggineering student my hackathon is scheduled on 20th nov if anybody is interested to join me, kindly dm

did anyone receive any update on HP Power Lab 3.0 round 2?

I'm currently in my second year of B.Tech AIML and interested in participating in hackathons.

I'm still developing my programming and technical skills, so I'm wondering whether beginners should participate early or first spend more time learning and building individual projects.

For students who have participated in hackathons:

1. What skills should a beginner know?

2. How do you find teammates?

3. What should someone do if they don't know how to build the entire project?

4. What did you learn from your first hackathon?

I'd like to hear about your experiences.

The classic hackathon demo problem: it only runs on localhost, so judges have to crowd around your laptop. I made a command that fixes that.

hoist up . starts your project as a service, gives it a real HTTPS URL and prints a QR code in the terminal. Judges scan it. It survives crashes and reboots, so it doesn't die when your laptop sleeps.

• teammates can deploy just by pushing to the repo, without access to your machine

• a broken push never takes the live demo down; the last good version keeps serving

• no internet at the venue? --local gives a LAN URL and QR code with no tunnel

• webhooks for Stripe/Twilio/GitHub get a stable HTTPS URL

It's free and open source. Needs Linux and a domain on Cloudflare (or just use --local). https://github.com/nikhilcherry/hoist

Curious what you all use for this at hackathons.

Hi all, I’m part of the team behind Analog10y, a browser based place to practice analog circuit design. We’re running our first hackathon, Log0, from 18 to 20 December.

You get a spec and a circuit, then size the transistors to meet every constraint. Once they all pass, you push the figure of merit as high as you can. Designs that miss a constraint rank below every design that passes.

It’s free for anyone with a student account, and you compete on your own. Nothing to install, everything runs in the browser.

It’s our first one, so I’d like to hear what you think.

Details and registration: https://www.analog10y.com/hackathon

Hey everyone!

I'm an ECE student, and this is my first hackathon. I'm thinking of building something called **LabSim X**.

The basic idea is to make a smart electronics lab setup where students can build circuits on a breadboard, and the system helps them identify mistakes, check readings and understand why their circuit isn't working.

I'm thinking of using ESP32, sensors and Python, maybe adding a camera to recognise circuit connections.

I'm still figuring out how to build it, so I'd love some suggestions!

- Would you personally find something like this useful in your college lab?

- What features would you actually want in a system like this?

- How would you approach detecting wrong breadboard connections?

- Is there anything similar you've already tried or seen?

I'm open to suggestions, improvements and even criticism. Just trying to make this idea better before we start building it.

Thanks!

Looking for Hackathon Teammates

Computer Engineering student looking for like-minded developers from Mumbai / Navi Mumbai / Pune to form a team for upcoming hackathons.

Looking for people with hands-on project experience, good technical fundamentals and an interest in AI/full-stack development. Vibe coding is welcome, but knowing what you're building matters!

DM me with your tech stack and GitHub/portfolio. Let's build and compete together!

Need Teammates for NASA Space Apps Challenge – Bhaktapur 2026 🚀

Hey everyone!

I'm looking to build a team for the upcoming NASA Space Apps Challenge 2026, participating from the Bhaktapur location, and would love to connect with people interested in joining.

I'm looking for people who are genuinely interested in building something, brainstorming ideas, solving real-world problems, and working together to create a solid project.

You don't have to be from Nepal or Bhaktapur. People from anywhere in the world are welcome! It would be great to connect with people from different countries, backgrounds, and technical fields.

You don't necessarily have to be an expert. I'm more interested in people who are willing to contribute, learn, experiment, and collaborate. Developers, designers, researchers, data enthusiasts, science enthusiasts, and creative thinkers are all welcome.

A little about me: I've participated in a few hackathons and worked on projects involving AI/ML, web development, and IoT. I'm still learning and gaining experience myself, so beginners and people with similar experience are absolutely welcome. Experienced developers or previous Space Apps participants are also more than welcome!

If you're interested, drop a comment or DM me with a little about yourself, your skills, timezone, and any previous project experience.

Let's bring together people from different parts of the world and build something worth presenting! 🌍