AI Competition Radar: September 27–October 4, 2026
This week's scout radar: the $2M Build with Gemini XPRIZE podium, HackGT 13's newly published winner roster, Kong's API + AI Summit Build Sprint, Blackbaud's social-impact pitch winners and Constructor Start's three $100K deeptech picks, plus the result rosters still unpublished and the dates to watch.
This edition covers results published between 27 September and 4 October 2026, Pacific time. Four competitions named their winners inside that stretch, and a fifth — the $2 million Build with Gemini XPRIZE — settled on 25 September, hours before the previous edition closed, so its podium is carried here. Every entry below gives the organizer, the date, the placement and prize, the named team, what the product is, and the first question a scout would put to that team.
This week at a glance
| Event | Organizer and place | Result date | Top result | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Build with Gemini XPRIZE | Google with XPRIZE; Moonshots LIVE, Los Angeles | 25 Sept | Polyfork wins the $500,000 grand prize | XPRIZE release |
| HackGT 13: Seaside Market | HexLabs at Georgia Tech; Atlanta | 25–27 Sept | Winner roster now on Devpost: 821 participants, 268 projects | Devpost gallery |
| API + AI Summit Hackathon | Kong; Los Angeles | 30 Sept–1 Oct | Vard (1st), KongChampion_Forever (2nd), ctc-global-sg (3rd) | Kong recap |
| Social Good Startup Pitch Competition | Blackbaud; bbcon 2026, Columbus, Ohio | 1 Oct | DonorAtlas, Apps NXT, Untapped Solutions, Bridgit | Blackbaud recap |
| Constructor Start Demo Day | Constructor University; Bremen | Held 21 Sept, published 30 Sept | Polasight, The Lithium Company, HiHolo; $100,000 each | Constructor University |
Build with Gemini XPRIZE: revenue in 90 days, judged by name investors
Google and XPRIZE gave builders 90 days to launch a clean-sheet, revenue-generating business on Gemini, and opened it to anyone in the world. More than 26,000 builders registered across five categories, and the final five pitched live at Moonshots LIVE in Los Angeles on 25 September. The judges were Cathie Wood of ARK Invest, Palmer Luckey of Anduril, Mark Pincus of Zynga and Logan Kilpatrick of Google DeepMind, and XPRIZE CEO Anousheh Ansari presented the awards 1.
Polyfork (Lucas Martinic, Germany) took the $500,000 grand prize. Polyfork sells 3D models as programs, so buyers resize, recolor and remix a model before they download it. An AI-agent factory publishes more than 175 models a week, and a catalogue of 583 models brought in $4,428 from 54 paying customers in its first month.
Tician Cierre (José Edgar Peña Ramírez, Mexico) took $200,000. MyFixam (Jane Chukwuyem Odum, Nigeria and the United States) took $100,000 for a marketplace where people in Nigeria find verified service providers and hold payment in escrow until the work is done; it launched on 2 July and reports more than 700 users 2. LaunchBridge (Chase Rosen, USA) and DodoPrep (Naveed Ahmed, India) each took $100,000.
Five $50,000 category prizes went to the highest-grossing project in each category: KOSMO (Harshal Dorlikar, India), NoBanks Nearby (USA), Trama AI Corp (Luis Carlos Reyes Vanegas and colleagues, Colombia), Mimi Money (Ns Mike, Uganda) and C2X (Esteban Londoño, Colombia). Fifteen further $50,000 runner-up awards went to OpportunityOS, Olva, Ten Minutes Wiser, Actingym, Spoken Letter, Esencia, Ability Bazaar, Barber Copilot, Sembramos, Pleno App, Teluma, Pantry Insight, GrowthSphere AI, Enamel and Seedubator. The $50,000 Agentic Economy Prize, powered by Circle, went to MergeGate (Heartlin Machado, USA).
Evidence status: the revenue and catalogue figures are the company's own, and the category prizes reward gross revenue rather than durable retention. Devpost administered the competition. First diligence question: of Polyfork's $4,428, how much is repeat revenue, and do buyers keep paying once the novelty of a remixable model wears off?
HackGT 13: Seaside Market — the winner roster is now public
HexLabs ran its 36-hour HackGT at Georgia Tech's Klaus Advanced Computing Building from 25 to 27 September, with 821 participants and 268 submitted projects 3. The previous edition counted the event and could not name its winners; the winner-flagged projects are now readable on the Devpost gallery, where the first page lists 24 of them 4.
Prizes ran across a Best Overall podium plus three named tracks (Oracle of the Deep, The Shipyard, The Lighthouse Laboratory) and sponsor challenges from Aramco, Impiricus, the NSA, Meta, Visa, SpaceXAI and Notability. The winner-flagged projects lean toward health and assistive tools. Fourteenth Floor pitches "the office for AI agents"; Athena is a call-security engine that detects AI voices and masks keystrokes from the microphone; ATP and ClearPath each attack prescription prior authorization, with ATP having AI handle insurer calls and ClearPath putting patients and doctors in one workspace that flags medication conflicts; TapChart puts a Parkinson's patient's motor baseline one NFC tap away so care teams can tell a tremor from a stroke; MiiHab turns physical therapy into a game with the clinician watching each rep; VIGIL pairs assistive eyewear with an autonomous aerial scout; and Sky-C2 identifies aircraft through an augmented-reality head-up display built on open-source intelligence.
Other winner-flagged builds include Lullabuy, which holds a Visa payment until a camera reads a baby gear label against recall databases; FlyBy, ground control for search and rescue; Inkling, a notes app that learns from what the writer erases; and HeirLoom, a family database and social platform.
Evidence status: the gallery shows which projects carry a winner ribbon, and it does not label the placement of each. First diligence question: for the prior-authorization builds, does either repository show commits after the weekend, and does either have an insurer or clinic pilot?
API + AI Summit Hackathon: a working build on Kong
Kong's API + AI Summit 2026 ran in Los Angeles on 30 September and 1 October, and its Build Sprint asked developers to ship something real on Kong rather than a slide deck 5. A panel of Kong solutions engineers and product staff scored entries on technical execution, genuine use of the product, and originality.
Vard, led by Pavan Aripakula, took first place, with Kong calling it the most differentiated build in the field and one that solves a problem customers meet every day. KongChampion_Forever, led by Sachin Ghumbre, took second. ctc-global-sg, led by Fernando Karnagi and Alinda Liaw Siew Ni, took third for an agent-swarm concept wired into Kong in a working way.
Evidence status: Kong published a short judge comment for each winner, and no project write-ups. First diligence question: how much of Vard's build depends on Kong's gateway specifically, and what remains if that layer is swapped out?
Blackbaud's Social Good pitch: three judges' picks and a people's pick
Blackbaud's Social Good Startup Program closed its 2026 showcase at bbcon 2026 in Columbus, Ohio on 1 October, with judges' and audience awards going to four companies from an 11-startup cohort 6.
The Judges' Choice awards went to DonorAtlas, which runs AI prospect research so fundraisers can find high-potential donors; Apps NXT, which builds applications that work inside Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge NXT; and Untapped Solutions, which took the Corporate Impact distinction for software that helps employers scale second-chance hiring. The People's Choice award went to Bridgit, which connects a nonprofit's systems, automates data cleanup and mapping, and makes the result usable across teams.
The winners receive a 2027 conference sponsorship and dedicated sales and marketing support; Blackbaud says 80 of the 95 startups to pass through the program are still operating 7.
Evidence status: the descriptions are Blackbaud's, and no funding, customer or revenue figures were published. First diligence question: DonorAtlas and Bridgit both sell into nonprofit data, so what contract sizes does the sector support, and is the Raiser's Edge NXT integration a moat or a dependency?
Constructor Start Demo Day: three deeptech spinouts, $100,000 each
Constructor University's Constructor Start program held its fourth Demo Day in Bremen, where 16 finalists from nine countries pitched, and three startups each received a $100,000 initial investment from Constructor Capital 8. The university published the outcome on 30 September, nine days after the 21 September event, and a Swiss startup newsroom carried the Polasight award the same week 9.
Polasight (Switzerland), a University of Bern spinout, builds a label-free imaging device for use during cancer surgery. It uses polarized light and its own AI models to map tissue in under a minute, and it reports 97% agreement with clinical pathology across more than 2,000 biopsies from two hospital sites. The founders are Roi Finish, Davide Scandella and Pablo Márquez-Neila.
The Lithium Company (USA) restores depleted lithium-ion batteries by replacing lost lithium. Its founder, Alex Ivanenko, previously led HyPoint, which the release says exited for $100 million; Dmitry Putintsev leads engineering and Ismael Rodríguez Pérez leads research. HiHolo (Georgia), founded by Kirill Kazakov, builds a deterministic AI engine.
Evidence status: the clinical agreement and the prior exit are the companies' own figures. The $100,000 is a seed-stage initial investment from Constructor Capital. First diligence question: for Polasight, what regulatory path does an intraoperative decision tool need, and what are the terms of the first hospital pilot?
Result announced, roster not yet published
- DevNetwork [API + Cloud + AI] Hackathon 2026 (Santa Clara and online, 17 August–3 September) drew 1,377 participants and 315 projects; the organizer has still to publish a winning-team roster roughly four weeks on 10.
- AI Infra Summit Hackathon (Kisaco Research with lablab.ai) closed on 16 September with 3,018 participants, 616 teams and 163 projects; the platform still shows judging in progress and lists only community-vote leaders 11.
- Hack-Nation's 7th Global AI Hackathon ran across 15-plus hubs and online on 3 and 4 October; results were still pending as this edition closed 12.
- Hack for Humanity, Summer 2026 ended on 2 October with 1,359 participants; the Devpost page still reads "winners announced soon" 13.
- The AI Conference 2026 Startup Showdown (San Francisco, 29 September–1 October) put eight early-stage AI startups on the main stage for four-minute pitches; the organizer had published no 2026 winner list when this edition closed 14.
Dates to watch
- 6 October — the IEEE Edge AI Hackathon 2026, a national-level hardware event, announces winners and presents prizes 15.
- 13 October — submissions close for Monad's Metropolis global hackathon, a $250,000 prize pool with an AI and agents track; judging runs 14 to 27 October and winners are due 3 November 16.
- 13–15 October — TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 fills Moscone West in San Francisco and closes with the Startup Battlefield final 17.
- 12 November — the PayPal AI Hackathon, run with Postman, Zapier, Elastic and others, closes with more than $60,000 in prizes 18.
Five teams to look at first
- Polyfork (Build with Gemini XPRIZE, $500,000). Ask how much of the first month's $4,428 came from repeat customers, and whether an agent-generated catalogue of 583 models can keep converting.
- MyFixam (Build with Gemini XPRIZE, $100,000). Ask for transaction volume and repeat rate since the 2 July launch, and whether escrow supports a take rate at current order values.
- Polasight (Constructor Start Demo Day, $100,000). Ask for the regulatory plan and the first hospital's pilot terms before reading the 97% pathology agreement as a clinical claim.
- ATP and ClearPath (HackGT 13 winners). Ask which repository shows commits after the weekend, and whether either has an insurer or clinic pilot.
- Vard (API + AI Summit Hackathon, first place). Ask for the demo, and how much of the build survives if the Kong gateway is swapped out.
This radar runs weekly, on the results each window produces. The next issue covers 4 to 11 October 2026.
References
- 1
- 2
- 3HackGT 13: Seaside Market
hackgt13.devpost.com
- 4HackGT 13 winning projects
hackgt13.devpost.com
- 5API + AI Summit Hackathon 2026
konghq.com
- 6Blackbaud's bbcon 2026 recap
blackbaud.com
- 7
- 8Three tech startups win $100,000 prize at Constructor University Demo Day
constructor.university
- 9
- 10DevNetwork API + Cloud + AI Hackathon 2026
api-cloud-ai-hackathon-2026.devpost.com
- 11
- 12
- 13Hack for Humanity, Summer 2026
hack-for-humanity-summer-26.devpost.com
- 14Startup Showdown 2026
aiconference.com
- 15IEEE Edge AI Hackathon 2026
events.vtools.ieee.org
- 16Metropolis
monad.xyz
- 17TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
techcrunch.com
- 18The PayPal AI Hackathon
developer.paypal.com
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