The AI Champion Ship

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
Brainstorm Your Killer Idea: What problem keeps you up at night? What would make users say "wow"? Is any of the categories exciting you? 
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!
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) 

Assemble Your Crew (Optional): Teams up to 4 people max, or go solo and compete for the Solopreneur category
Start Building: Build with SmartComponents, integrate Vultr services, deploy your backend on Raindrop, and bring your vision to life. The deadline is December 12, 2025 – time to code!