About the challenge

Welcome aboard The AI Champion Ship — a global competition for builders, dreamers, and tinkerers who want to push AI beyond the ordinary.

Your mission: build an AI-powered app that’s original, useful, or delightfully weird. Whether you create a voice agent, productivity tool, creative assistant, or something no one expects — we want to see what you can ship.

Brought to you by LiquidMetal AI, in partnership with Vultr, Cerebras, ElevenLabs, Netlify, WorkOS, Stripe, Searchable and Cloudflare, this hackathon celebrates imagination, speed, and technical execution.

The stakes? 

• The Championship Belt
• $35K+ in cash prizes
• Another $35K+ in credits
• Meetings with Top VCs 
• and more!

Your Paths to Victory

This is an open-topic hackathon – build whatever you can dream of. No restrictions, no boundaries. If you can imagine it, you can build it. Everyone automatically competes for: 

🏆 Best Overall Idea:

The most innovative, impactful, and brilliantly executed concept.

❤️ Audience Favourite:

The project with the most public votes takes home the Audience Favourite award.

Want to compete for additional prizes?

You can optionally choose to enter one of these six specialized tracks:

🎯 Best Small Startup Agents:

The ultimate force multiplier: an AI agent that helps tiny teams punch way above their weight

🎙️ Best Voice Agent (ElevenLabs):

Voice AI experiences that feel genuinely human and solve real problems

🛒 Best Agentic Shopping Experience:

Reimagine retail with AI that browses, negotiates, and personalizes the shopping journey

🌍 Best AI Solution for Public Good:

Build something that matters: tackle environmental challenges, or advance social good

💡 Best AI App by a Solopreneur:

Solo founders, this is your category. No Teams allowed. 

⚡ Best Ultra-Low Latency App (Cerebras):

Leverage powerful Cerebras Inference for ultra low latency use cases.

How to get started

1. Brainstorm Your Killer Idea: What problem keeps you up at night? What would make users say "wow"? Is any of the categories exciting you? 
2. Join the Community: Hop into LiquidMetal Discord channel (#ai-champion-ship) for support, office hours, and to connect with fellow builders. Get your questions answered in real-time!
3. Set Up Your Stack: Claim your credits to start building (provided upon registration in the email StarterKit) 
   • $500 in LiquidMetal AI's Raindrop credits
   • $500 in Vultr credits
   • Up to 1M tokens/day per Model from Cerebras (list of models and rate limits here) 
4. Assemble Your Crew (Optional): Teams up to 4 people max, or go solo and compete for the Solopreneur category
5. Start Building: Build with SmartComponents, integrate Vultr services, deploy your backend on Raindrop, and bring your vision to life.
   
   The deadline is December 7, 2025 – time to code!

• How well does the product incorporate Raindrop Smart Components?
  Does the project successfully implement any of the Raindrop Smart Components (SmartBuckets, SmartSQL, SmartMemory or SmartInference) where it makes sense? Is the application deployed on Raindrop?
• How well does the product incorporate Vultr services?
  Does the app successfully utilize any of the Vultr services?
• Is the project close to launch quality?
  Is the application functional? Does it have WorkOS authentication, payment processing, etc?
• Quality of the Idea
  How creative and unique is the project? Does the concept exist already? If so, how much does the project improve on it? Does it solve real world problems? What is the potential impact of the project?
• Submission quality
  How well is the project showcased in the description and on the video? Did the submitter provide meaningful feedback on Raindrop and Vultr Platforms? Did the submitter post their project on social media (LinkedIn, X) tagging LiquidMetal.AI and Vultr ?