229 students ship 56 AI prototypes in under 24 hours at the Hong Kong AI Summit 2026 Hackathon
Europe and Asia build AI together at HKUST Business School in Hong Kong's first Europe-Asia student AI hackathon
Hong Kong, 5 October 2026. The Hong Kong AI Summit 2026 opened on 3 and 4 October with a two-day AI Hackathon and AI Symposium at HKUST Business School Central in Admiralty. 229 students formed 65 teams. 56 teams submitted a working prototype and demo video in under 24 hours. Five teams took the track awards on Sunday afternoon.
The HKUST MBA and the HKUST Entrepreneurship Center hosted the hackathon and symposium together with the Erasmus AI Society and MAIN, the Maastricht AI & Tech Network. Hong Kong Talent Engage provided institutional support. The event attracted interest from more than 500 students. The 229 who took part in the hackathon came from 16 universities across Hong Kong, Mainland China, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
The hackathon asked students to solve real problems from industry. Each team had to ship a working AI application against an industry brief. Nearly six in ten participants described themselves as AI beginners when they registered. They learned from industry experts on topics such as building in the AI-first era, the state of applied AI and AI adoption at scale, and received mentoring from HKUST MBA alumni and students from the HKUST MBA Tech & AI Innovation Club.
Professor Stephen Shih, Associate Dean of MBA Programs at HKUST Business School, closed the event with a message on teamwork.
"AI is a powerful tool, but it does not replace a team," he said. "The best work this weekend came from people who built together. The organising team is the proof: students from Hong Kong and Europe who delivered this event as one team."
Five Tracks, Five Industry Briefs
Challenge partners framed each brief on Saturday morning, mentored teams through the build and sat on the judging panel. The Startup track drew the most entries, with 22 submissions.
| Track | Challenge Partner | The Brief |
|---|---|---|
| Finance: AI for Retail Banking | WeLab | Build an AI tool that improves financial decisions for retail banking customers |
| Finance and Wealth | Capco | Deliver private-bank-level wealth advice at scale, personalised and compliant |
| Entrepreneurship: Reinventing Insurance | Bolttech | Reinvent insurance for an AI-native world |
| Urbanisation: Reimagining Energy | CLP | Use AI to help Hong Kong grow as a sustainable, liveable and competitive city |
| Startup: Build Your Own Idea | AWS | Choose the problem, the customer and the solution |
Teams built with Kimi API credits and Lovable credits from the event's technology partners. Mentors supported teams in the room on Saturday and online through the night.
Three HKUST MBA students led the event for HKUST alongside student organisers from the Erasmus AI Society and MAIN. "Our challenge track partners shared problems that they and their clients are working on right now, and the students embraced those problems as their own," said Derek Cheung, who led partnerships and programme. Manon Thuries, who led planning and operations, saw the theme of the Summit play out in the room: "Europe and Asia often talk about working together on AI. This weekend, students simply did it." For Harry Gadsby, also on planning and operations, it was the pace: "On Saturday morning, teams had a blank page. By Sunday lunch, they were defending a product in front of industry judges."
Submissions closed at 10:30 on Sunday. A ten-member judging panel from CLP, WeLab, Capco, Bolttech, Deloitte, Votee, Optimus Labs, HK AI Partners and HKUST Business School shortlisted ten finalists, two per track. Each finalist pitched for three minutes and took two minutes of questions from the panel.
"I judged these teams the way I would judge a proposal in industry: does it solve a real problem, and does it work," said Professor Fred Mutto, a leading expert on sustainability and business at HKUST, who brought his energy industry experience to the judging panel for the Urbanisation track. "The theme of AI speaks directly to Hong Kong's strategy for technology development. In under 24 hours, students delivered answers that deserve to be taken seriously. Our faculty are fully behind this kind of learning, where students build with industry and do not only study it."
A Strong Speaker Line-up
The line-up drew on the networks of all four organising partners: the HKUST MBA, the HKUST Entrepreneurship Center under Director Carrie Ling, the Erasmus AI Society and MAIN. Mr Maurits ter Kuile, Consul General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Hong Kong and Macao, and Ms Anna Au, Deputy Director of Hong Kong Talent Engage, opened the hackathon. Marc van der Chijs, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Tudou, gave the keynote, "Building in the AI-First Era".
Sunday's AI Symposium opened with Michael Yung, Strategic Advisor at Google Cloud and faculty member of the HKUST MBA programme, on the state of applied AI. Marcos Chow, Group Chief Information Officer of HKT, spoke on AI adoption at scale, and Suny Sinha, AI Product Analyst at Capco, on hyper-personalisation in wealth management. A panel followed with Alan Chan, Founder and CEO of Omnichat, George Guo, CEO of IQAX, and Vincent So, Founder of Inspect Element, moderated by HKUST MBA student Daniel Cheng. The symposium ran while the judging panel scored submissions.
The Five Winners
The judging panel named one winner per track. Four winning teams each received a cash award. The Startup track winner received AWS credits and a place on the Microsoft Student Ambassador programme.
| Award | Track | Challenge Partner |
|---|---|---|
| HKUST Smart Banking Award | Finance: AI for Retail Banking | WeLab |
| HKUST Wealth Innovation Award | Finance and Wealth | Capco |
| HKUST Insurance Reinvention Award | Entrepreneurship: Reinventing Insurance | Bolttech |
| HKUST Future Energy Award | Urbanisation: Reimagining Energy | CLP |
| HKUST Venture Launch Award | Startup: Build Your Own Idea | AWS |
About the Hong Kong AI Summit 2026 Hackathon and Symposium
The AI Hackathon and AI Symposium took place on 3 and 4 October 2026 at HKUST Business School Central. They opened the Hong Kong AI Summit 2026, a week-long international programme running from 3 to 9 October under the theme BUILD ACROSS: where Europe and Asia build AI together. The HKUST MBA and the HKUST Entrepreneurship Center hosted the hackathon and symposium together with the Erasmus AI Society and MAIN, the Maastricht AI & Tech Network. Hong Kong Talent Engage provides institutional support, alongside the Consulate General of the Netherlands and the Dutch Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. The hackathon and symposium were backed by challenge partners WeLab, Capco, Bolttech, CLP and AWS, and technology partners Moonshot AI, the company behind Kimi, and Lovable. Ecosystem partners of the wider Summit are Microsoft, RevisionDojo, Cyberport, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks and the AI Hong Kong Association. Speakers and judges joined from Google Cloud, HKT, Deloitte, Omnichat, IQAX, Inspect Element, Votee, Optimus Labs and HK AI Partners.
Media contact: mba@ust.hk