A 1-day founder-focused sprint designed to uncover exceptional entrepreneurial talent by challenging participants to build venture-scale products powered by AI agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Harness the power of autonomous AI agents and Model Context Protocol to create the next generation of intelligent applications
Build autonomous agents that can reason, plan, and execute complex tasks with minimal human intervention
Leverage MCP to enable seamless communication between AI models and external tools and systems
Create solutions with real market potential that could become the foundation of tomorrow's unicorns
Win cash prizes and get the chance to launch your startup with Afore Capital
Selected participants will have the chance to be considered for Afore Capital's pre-seed program, investing $500K–$2M+ in exceptional founders.
Direct access to investors and potential mentors
Learn from experts in AI agents and MCP
Limited edition hackathon gear
Ongoing support from Afore Capital & AI Valley
Bringing together the best in AI innovation and venture capital
Pre-seed & seed stage venture capital firm backing exceptional founders
Premier AI community fostering innovation and collaboration
Interested in sponsoring?
Contact Us
Co-Founder & CTO
Eudia
Ashish is an AI and tech leader with two decades of experience across Google, Amazon, Apple, IBM Research, and AI startups. He is now the Co-Founder and CTO at Eudia, an augmented intelligence company for in-house legal teams, leveraging his deep expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning to transform legal operations.
2x YC Founder | Founder at Basic
Abhi is a 2x YC founder + PM with experiences across seed to series C startups. He previously built software to close $600M in property, and led teams at EY Parthenon to conduct $20B in product diligence. He also helped grow a startup from Series A to C ($750M) valuation in just one year.
Lead Security Software Engineer
Netflix
Sumana is a Lead Security Software Engineer at Netflix, specializing in enterprise identity and access management, authentication modernization, and AI-driven identity threat protection. She has been recognized as an Identity Innovator by leading Identity platform in 2024 and frequently contributes to advancing security practices across the industry.
Member of Technical Staff
OpenAI
Bhavin is a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI, where he builds core infrastructure that powers cutting-edge AI systems. Over the past decade, he has led engineering for some of the most ambitious tech initiatives—developing the Oculus VR operating system at Meta, launching Novi's peer-to-peer stablecoin payments platform, and building crypto-native infrastructure at TaxBit. Bhavin is known for turning frontier ideas into real-world systems through deep technical rigor and first-principles thinking.
Engineering Manager
Meta
Riya is an Engineering Manager at Meta, public speaker, and community advocate. She is passionate about building technology that makes a meaningful impact and empowering people to grow, innovate, and lead. With extensive experience in software engineering and team leadership, she focuses on creating inclusive tech communities and mentoring the next generation of engineers.
VP Engineering
Mercor
Srini is VP of Engineering at Mercor, bringing extensive experience from leading engineering teams at world-class technology companies. He previously held key leadership positions at Navan, Stripe, Instacart, Uber, Google, and Amazon, where he built and scaled systems that serve millions of users globally. His expertise spans distributed systems, platform engineering, and building high-performance teams that deliver innovative products at scale.
Co-Founder & CTO
Integral Technologies
Chidambaram is the Co-Founder & CTO of Integral Technologies, a fintech startup specializing in AI-driven transfer pricing compliance. He brings deep expertise in building secure, scalable systems for regulated industries, with a focus on leveraging artificial intelligence to solve complex financial compliance challenges.
Senior Software Engineer
Bolt
Sujata is a Senior Software Engineer at Bolt, with prior experience at Microsoft and Amazon. She specializes in AI-driven solutions and large-scale backend systems, holds a patent-pending invention in AI checkout technology, and is passionate about mentoring and helping teams bring ideas to life.
Software Engineer, Generative AI
LinkedIn
Dhyey is a Software Engineer on the Generative AI team at LinkedIn, where he develops scalable inference systems powering large-scale recommendation and generative models. His recent work includes building a GPU-accelerated inference engine in Rust and PyTorch, cutting P99 latency by over 2x and saving ~$1M in compute costs. He has also won and judged leading AI competitions, including HackMIT, and was selected for Y Combinator's inaugural AI Startup School. Dhyey is passionate about building AI systems that are both technically efficient and thoughtfully aligned with human workflows.
Engineering Manager
Broadcom
Sandeep is an Engineering Manager at Broadcom, leading Enterprise AI Infrastructure Platform Development and Engineering teams. He brings deep expertise in building and scaling AI infrastructure solutions that power enterprise-grade applications and services.
Tech Lead & Member of Technical Staff
Pure Storage
Ashutosh is a Tech Lead and Member of Technical Staff at Pure Storage, specializing in distributed systems and scalable APIs that drive intelligent storage infrastructure. On a personal level, his passion lies in building next-generation edutech platforms—with a professional focus on scalable infrastructure for intelligent storage management across heterogeneous systems.
Founder
Lucent
Alisa is the founder of Lucent, an AI-native session replay platform that automates product insights. She previously founded Stella AI, an Australian EdTech startup that she exited in 2024. Prior to that, she was a founding engineer at MagicBrief, which was acquired by Canva. She has also worked as a software engineer at Atlassian, building products used by millions of developers worldwide. Her expertise spans AI product development, full-stack engineering, and building early-stage companies.
Everything you need to know about the hackathon
You do not have to be physically present for the entire duration of the event, only during, check-ins, finals submissions and demos.
Projects are evaluated on: Approach & Idea (viability, market strategy, feasibility), Product - Technical (demo quality, technical impressiveness), Presentation (clarity and appeal), Product - Design (effort and thoughtfulness), X Factor (what makes it extraordinary), and AI Relevance & Depth (meaningful use of AI agents).
Only those accepted on lu.ma are eligible to participate. In-person participation is a day commitment on August 23rd in San Francisco (address revealed upon acceptance).
To ensure fairness, all code must be started after 10:30 AM on the event day. We will actively check this. You cannot build on existing projects.
You can work on any project involving AI agents, as long as it is public on GitHub. To qualify, your project must meaningfully address those requirements.
Projects must be pushed to GitHub with a video demo, README file, and Devpost submission link before 5:30 PM. All submissions and commits must take place before the deadline.
Teams can have up to 4 people plus AI assistants.
Yes! Both individual and team participation are welcome. You can also form teams on-site.
