AI Engine - The Hack

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Last week was a blur. I lived on my laptop — I was at my computer until 3am almost every night, then would wake up at 7 to go straight back to the screen. I didn’t shower, I’d forget to shower, really. I wish I was kidding.

It was a week of grinding and running on that “just get it done” adrenaline.

The irony was that we were preparing for a hackathon — while living and breathing the very essence of one.

The team behind the effort was some of the leading venture funds and organizations in Europe:

• Zoe Qin from Dawn Capital

• Myself from Chapter One

• Justina Chung from Bessemer

• Will Bennett from Seedcamp

• Patrick Gilday, Angel Investor & Staff at UCL

… alongside the brilliant AI and Entrepreneurial Societies from UCL, Oxford, Cambridge, and Imperial. Together, we launched the inaugural AI Engine: UK University Hackathon.

The event itself was a massive success.

It took place at UCL’s UCL East campus. UCL is one of the leading AI research institutions in the world right now. Sam Altman visited London a few months ago; it was his only stop.

And you felt the significance and ambition walking in — the first thing you see entering the building is a giant globe danging in the foyer (image below). The globe was almost a call to action, asking you to build technology to capture a world full of users.

We had 210 participants (current students and alumni from the four top universities), 10 incredible sponsors, and close to 50 industry leaders. All of whom came together to build and support projects using the most powerful AI tools on the market.

Friday was a workshop day where sponsors led back-to-back 30-minute sessions to demo their companies and show participants how to best leverage them.

Saturday was a full day of in-person hacking.

What made the event so special was that everyone showed up. The sponsors and industry leaders were the “who's who” of the AI world. Google Cloud, OpenAI, Anthropic, ElevenLabs, Mistral, Canva, Vercel, Ragie, Hyperbolic and Encore. The participants were the sharpest engineers coming out of these universities.

I spoke to teams who were hackathon veterans and to others (e.g., neuroscience PhDs) who were getting their hands dirty with AI APIs for the first time and said they’d never look back.

I don’t have enough space to get into the actual projects and technology here. I tried, but there were too many, and the ideas were too good to be tucked into this one, so I’ll write a follow-up article.

But by the end of the day, it became clear — the next unicorn, billion-dollar company will come from the London ecosystem, and the founders might have been in that room.

Thank you — thank you to all the organizers, sponsors, industry leaders, university volunteers, and participants. It was incredible to see it all come together, and I am deeply grateful for all the time and effort invested to make it happen. Thank you to UCL for partnering with us to host at your campus. I was so inspired afterward that I had an urge to enroll in a PhD haha.

And a special shout out and thank you to Zoe Qin from Dawn Capital. You’re exceptional. The level of excellence and focus that you bring to everything you do is unmatched. If you’re a European builder, you must speak to her.

What’s next? We’re going global 🎉 — It wasn’t just a map of the UK hanging in UCL’s entrance hall. We’re taking AI Engine across Europe!! Partnering with higher education institutions and local startup communities in France, Germany, Switzerland, and elsewhere — tapping into the same incredible mix of new ideas and willing supporters to build a vibrant, collaborative, cutting-edge community. Get in touch if you want to be part of the next chapter!

Make sure you stay up to date on future AI Engine events and happenings, and subscribe to our newsletter: https://aienginehack.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Let’s keep building 🔥🔥🔥

Hacking. Thank you to the Dawn marketing team for all the amazing posters & branding -

Organizers and industry mentors -

Pitches to judges -

Zoe & I announcing the finalists -

Presentation from the winners -

Photo credit to Adam Isfendiyar. He’s amazing, reach out to him for any London events.

I’m an investor at Chapter One, an early-stage venture fund that invests $500K - $2M checks into pre-seed and seed-stage startups.

If you’re a founder building a company, please feel free to reach out on Twitter (@seidtweets) or Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesin-seidel-5325b147/).