Celebrating hackathon innovation with NVIDIA at GTC (Wrap-up)

Conferences like NVIDIA GTC 2025 reveal a powerful truth about technology: the most exciting breakthroughs happen when developers get their hands on new tools and run with them. From groundbreaking keynote announcements to hands-on developer sessions, the conference highlighted the power of AI across industries. 

Devpost had two major announcements at GTC. First, the winners of the ArangoDB & NVIDIA hackathon were announced live at the ArangoDB booth. Second, HP & NVIDIA launched an exciting new hackathon.

In this wrap-up, we’ll spotlight both announcements and explore how hackathons continue to drive AI forward.

ArrangoDB + NVIDIA hackathon winner announcements at GTC

Incorporating the energy from a hackathon into your event strategy is a powerful way to reach developers by driving booth engagement. At GTC 2025, we saw this firsthand with the exciting winner’s announcement for the ArangoDB + NVIDIA hackathon, Building the Next-Gen Agentic App with GraphRAG & NVIDIA cuGraph.

The announcement was a perfect fit for the conference, as the competition challenged participants to explore the potential of graph databases and AI. It was also streamed online, allowing a wider audience to join in the excitement.

About the winning projects

• First place: The GDELT Open Intelligence Agent uses natural language queries to provide real-time insights on global events, dynamically selecting the most suitable tools for each task.‍
• Second place: AskStreets provides the ability to translate natural language queries into street network analysis.
• ‍Third place: NeuThera AI-Driven Drug Discovery Toolkit supports both end-to-end drug discovery automation and interactive, user-guided drug design workflows.

New hackathon announcement: HP + NVIDIA Developer Challenge

As a conference designed around developers and AI, GTC provided a great opportunity to announce the brand-new HP & NVIDIA Developer Challenge on Devpost. Announcing the hackathon at GTC helped amplify the reach and is a key example of how strategic partnerships can elevate hackathons.

Hackathon details

With $70,000 in prizes and a chance to directly influence product development, this hackathon creates a bridge between product teams and the developer community.

• Task: Develop an AI-powered web app using HP AI Studio tools
• Integration: Powered by NVIDIA NGC libraries
• Submission period: April 7 to June 9, 2025

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Why hackathons drive technical exploration

Hackathons create an environment where developers and tech enthusiasts can collaborate, experiment, and push the boundaries of what’s possible. They provide a direct way to connect with developers, showcase new technologies, and drive adoption through hands-on experience.

For DevRel professionals, this means uncovering use cases that internal teams might miss. For product marketing managers, it's a direct pipeline to understanding how developers truly interact with your technology.

Private internal hackathons are also used to accelerate and uncover innovation by encouraging rapid prototyping and real-world problem-solving, often leading to breakthroughs that might not have emerged otherwise.

Related reading: 4 Ways to use hackathons in your developer marketing strategy

The future of AI innovation starts with your next hackathon

GTC 2025 showcased the power of hackathons in driving AI innovation, from the exciting ArangoDB + NVIDIA winner announcement to the unveiling of the new HP x NVIDIA Developer Challenge on Devpost. These events are more than just competitions—they’re vital for accelerating product adoption and discovering unexpected applications of cutting-edge technologies.

Ready to see how a hackathon can enhance your developer strategy? Book a demo and start designing a hackathon that can showcase your tools’ real-world potential far more effectively than any sales deck.