AI Builders Hackathon Coming to SF
Nebius is hosting "Nebius.Build SF," a full-day, in-person event for AI builders at Shack15 on March 15. The event will feature workshops on inference and robotics, hack sprints, and over $25,000 in prizes for teams working on AI projects.
The event's host, Nebius, is a Nasdaq-listed AI infrastructure company headquartered in Amsterdam. The company emerged in 2024 as a spin-off from the Dutch parent company of Yandex, retaining many of its former employees and focusing on providing AI-centric cloud services. Nebius targets AI-focused startups and enterprises with its full-stack platform, which includes large-scale GPU clusters and tools for intensive AI/ML workloads like model training and inference. The company has received significant investment, including $700 million from Nvidia and Accel Ventures, and is one of a select few "Reference Platform NVIDIA Cloud Partners," giving it early access to new Nvidia technology. The hackathon's workshops on inference and robotics are timely, as the Bay Area is seeing a surge in events focused on building autonomous agents and real-world applications. The "sim-to-real" robotics workshop, for instance, directly addresses a key challenge in deploying autonomous systems. The venue, Shack15, is a 51,000-square-foot "social club" for entrepreneurs and innovators located in San Francisco's iconic Ferry Building. It's designed to be a hub for founders, investors, and technologists to connect and collaborate, making it a fitting location for an event aimed at the startup ecosystem. This event is part of a crowded landscape of AI-focused hackathons in San Francisco, with organizations like Mistral, Llama Lounge, and various venture firms hosting competitions with significant prize pools throughout the year. The Nebius.Build event is strategically timed just before NVIDIA's GTC, a major AI developer conference, positioning it as a warm-up for builders. Beyond its core cloud offerings, Nebius Group also operates other businesses, including Avride, which develops autonomous vehicles, and TripleTen, an edtech platform for tech careers. This broader focus on the AI ecosystem, from infrastructure to application and education, provides context for their interest in fostering a community of builders.
