Challenges and Prizes
Important Sponsor Prize Info!
Each team may submit to a maximum of two sponsor challenges. When you submit on Devpost, select up to two sponsors — you’ll present to each one and can win both awards. Teams are still eligible for all general prizes and MLH Prizes (Best Overall, Best Design, Best Hardware, Best Startup, Best Beginner, Best Use of ElevenLabs, Best Use of Auth0, etc.); the only restriction is the number of sponsor challenges you enter.
Table of Contents
Sponsor Challenges & Prizes
PNC
Challenge
We challenge you to design an AI-powered productivity solution for Product Managers.
The solution should reimagine how artificial intelligence can be embedded across the product lifecycle to help Product Managers make better decisions, accelerate speed to market, and scale effectively in a complex, highly regulated industry.
Your solution could support Product Managers in areas such as: Product Strategy & Ideation: Brainstorming, market sizing, scenario planning, and aligning customer needs with business goals. Requirements & Development: Drafting user stories, acceptance criteria, and backlog grooming with AI-assisted clarity and prioritization. Customer & Market Research: Synthesizing customer feedback, competitor activity, and industry trends into actionable insights. Prototyping & Testing: Generating wireframes, mockups, or test cases and iterating with synthetic or real user feedback. Go-to-Market Execution: Assisting in persona development, Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy, release notes, and stakeholder communication. Automation & Intelligent Agents: Automating repetitive Product Manager workflows such as sprint planning, reporting, and cross-team updates.
Prizes
1st: PlayStation 5 Slim
2nd: Ray-ban Meta AI Sunglasses
3rd: Yaber T1 Pro-Mini Smartphone Projector
T-Mobile
Challenge
Build the T-Mobile Customer Happiness Index — a real-time, data-driven solution that captures how customers feel about T-Mobile. Engineer a system that streams live sentiment, feedback, and network data to detect issues before they spread, highlight moments of delight, and empower teams to enhance the customer experience. Use your skills in data engineering, APIs, analytics, and visualization to turn customer emotion into actionable insight.
Prizes
1st: iPhone 17
2nd: iPad Air
3rd: Beats Studio Pro Headphones
StateFarm
Challenge
In this 24-hour hackathon challenge, build a tool that compares responses from two versions of a service by sending the same request to both and identifying any differences in their outputs. You will design and implement your own example service and front end as needed.
The service should support operations such as creating and retrieving data, with input and output structured in JSON. Some differences between versions—like generated IDs during creation—are expected and should be flagged as acceptable. Unexpected differences, such as mismatched fields or error statuses, indicate potential issues.
Your tool must perform a deep comparison of the responses, clearly reporting all discrepancies while distinguishing expected from unexpected differences. Provide a concise summary highlighting any regressions or inconsistencies.
This challenge tests your ability to design, implement, and validate service behavior across versions, ensuring smooth evolution and reliable upgrades.
Prizes
1st: HOVERair X1 Drone w/Camera
2nd: Bose Earbuds
3rd: Newsmy Portable Power Station
Goldman Sachs
Challenge
Problem Statement:
Traditional vendor and client onboarding processes are often manual, fragmented, and prone to inefficiencies, leading to significant delays, increased operational costs, and heightened security risks. These processes frequently lack robust privilege management, making it difficult to enforce the baseline control requirements. Furthermore, the absence of integrated fraud detection mechanisms during onboarding exposes organizations to financial losses and reputational damage from fraudulent entities or activities. A unified, intelligent solution is needed to streamline these critical business functions while bolstering security and compliance.
Solution Overview:
The challenge is to develop a ""Secure & Intelligent Onboarding Hub"" – a comprehensive platform that automates and secures the entire lifecycle of vendor and client onboarding. This solution should integrate control requirements and advanced fraud detection capabilities, leveraging AI/ML to enhance efficiency and security.
Components to Consider Building:
Onboarding portal to submit the required information for onboarding and reviews for vendors/clients via dynamic UI forms. Automated workflow engine to manage the onboarding process, verification, approvals, dynamic routing based on the assessments. Security assessment module to validate compliance with the baseline security controls requirements based on the type of the vendor/client including but not limited to identity and access management, encryption, logging/monitoring, network security, etc. Privacy module to identify involvement of any personal data (PII) during or after the onboarding process, flag it accordingly and provide a masking solution where feasible. Fraud detection and risk scoring module for real-time monitoring, scoring and alerting based on the behavioral patterns and data. Audit and Reporting dashboard for administrators to monitor onboarding progress and for leadership to get overall metrics.
Sample Datasets/Resources
Kaggle's vendor/client management datasets Supplier datasets on data.gov Public marketplace onboarding processes "
Prizes
1st: Apple Airpod Pros 3
2nd: Apple TV
3rd: $50 Grub Hub gift card
Toyota Financial Services
Challenge
Toyota’s global vision is to lead the future of mobility, enriching lives around the world with the safest and most responsible ways of moving people.
Toyota is the leader in making some of the best-selling, fuel efficient and top-quality automobiles in the world. As part of the hackathon, develop a web or mobile solution that helps people to easily shop for Toyota’s vehicles by searching, comparing, and finding their dream cars based on several personal preferences including costs to finance and/or lease a vehicle.
Prizes
1st: $500 Amazon Gift Card
2nd: $350 Amazon Gift Card
3rd: $150 Amazon Gift Card
Northmark Compute & Cloud (NMC^2)
Challenge
NMC² operates several data centers around the globe including a $2.8 billion high performance compute facility powering 400MW of compute. Data center technicians keep these massive computing facilities running 24/7 however their day-to-day work is full MCof challenges such as complex workflows, varied environments, and endless work orders that demand attention. Build a solution that helps technicians stay efficient, safe, and effective. We're looking for creative solutions that bring a fresh perspective and we encourage hackers to think outside of the box. Prizes: I’ve put in a request and am currently awaiting approval from HR leadership.
Prizes
1st place will choose first, followed by 2nd and 3rd. The prizes are as follows:
- Nintendo Switch 2
- Sony WH-1000XM5 Headphones
- DJI Tello Drones
Capital One
Challenge
Our track is The Best Financial Hack! This is your chance to change the game in fintech. Whether it's an innovative payment solution, helping consumers shop smarter, making financing more accessible, or a creative way to improve financial literacy, we want to see your boldest ideas in action. The track is intentionally vague to let you bring your own creativity to it!
Prizes
1st: $300 Amazon Gift Card
NVIDIA
Challenge
NVIDIA is excited to sponsor HackUTD this year, inviting teams to build with NVIDIA Nemotron and push beyond basic chatbots. The challenge focuses on intelligent agents capable of planning and executing multi-step workflows, integrating external tools and APIs, and solving real-world problems with meaningful impact. Participants will explore how AI can take action, not just respond; opening pathways to automation, research acceleration, creative production, and more.
Projects must demonstrate:
- Reasoning beyond single-prompt conversation
- Workflow orchestration across steps or services
- Tool and API integration for data or task execution
- Clear practical value and applicability
Top teams will compete for NVIDIA prizes, including RTX 5080 GPUs, NVIDIA backpacks, merch, and Brev credits to continue prototyping. Whether you’re new to agentic AI or already building autonomous systems, this is your chance to shape what’s next.
Build. Iterate. Execute. Let’s see what you create.
Prizes
1st: 3 RTX 5080 GPUs + 3 NVIDIA Logo Hats
2nd: 2 RTX 5080 GPUs + 3 NVIDIA Backpacks + 3 $100 Brev Credits
3rd: 3 NVIDIA Backpacks + 3 $200 Brev Credits
CBRE
Challenge
Prizes
1st: $250 Amazon Gift Card
2nd: $150 Amazon Gift Card
3rd: $75 Amazon Gift Card
EOG
Challenge
CauldronWatch: The Potion Flow Monitoring Challenge
Deep within Poyo’s Potion Factory, dozens of enchanted cauldrons bubble away, collecting potions from brewing towers spread across the facility. Each cauldron fills at its own pace before courier witches swoop in to haul the precious brews to the Enchanted Market. Every collection is logged using Potion Transport Tickets detailing how much potion was collected and when the journey finished.
But lately, something’s amiss! Potion volumes don’t quite match the transport tickets, and rumors of unlogged potion drains are spreading through the halls.
Your task is to develop a real-time Potion Flow Monitoring Dashboard that tracks potion levels across all cauldrons, identifies collection events, and checks the Potion Transport Tickets to detect any missing or unlogged potion. The system should automatically flag inconsistencies, identify suspicious activity, and help ensure every drop of potion is properly accounted for.
You’ll receive historical and real-time cauldron level data, Potion Transport Ticket records, and a map of the potion network linking each cauldron to the Enchanted Market. Use these to visualize the entire operation, monitor live potion flows, and test your real-time detection logic.
✨ Bonus: Extend your system to forecast brew levels and optimize courier routes — helping witches plan efficient pickup schedules, prevent cauldron overflows, and keep the potion trade flowing smoothly across the realm. hackutd2025.eog.systems
Prizes
1st: Nintendo Switch 2
2nd: Ninja Cremi
Need help?
If you're unsure which challenge to pick or want to clarify something about the challenge, visit the sponsor's channel in the discord or their booth if they are available.
View all MLH Information for HackUTD: Lost in the Pages here
Best Use of Gemini API
Challenge
It’s time to push the boundaries of what's possible with AI using Google Gemini. Check out the Gemini API to build AI-powered apps that make your friends say WHOA. So, what can Gemini do for your hackathon project?
- Understand language like a human and build a chatbot that gives personalized advice
- Analyze info like a supercomputer and create an app that summarizes complex research papers
- Generate creative content like code, scripts, music, and more
Think of the possibilities… what will you build with the Google Gemini API this weekend?
Prizes
Google Swag Kits
Best Use of Solana
Challenge
The world of development is evolving fast and Solana is leading the charge with a network built to handle all of your infrastructure needs. Forget high fees and slow confirmations, it’s time to build applications that are fast, efficient, and scalable.
Harness Solana's core advantages like blazing fast execution and near-zero transaction costs to make your hackathon ideas become real world projects. With Solana, the possibilities are endless.
- Create a game, social app, or consumer product that relies on instant, high-frequency transactions.
- Design a sophisticated trading, lending, or decentralized exchange (DEX).
- Build a prototype for supply chain, identity, or payments that can handle massive, real-world volume.
Show us how you can innovate with Solana for a chance to win some cool prizes for you and each member of your team!
Prizes
SenseCAP Card Tracker
Best Use of Digital Ocean Gradient AI
Challenge
DigitalOcean GradientTM AI is a unified AI cloud for building, training, and deploying machine learning models and AI agents. Get access to GPU infrastructure like DigitalOcean GPU Droplets and Bare Metal servers, along with serverless inference and 1-Click Models for instant deployment of your favorite LLMs!
Sign up for DigitalOcean today and get $200 worth of free credits that you can use towards building your next Gradient-powered hack. Enable your next project with DigitalOcean GradientTM AI for a chance to win some great prizes for you and each of your team mates!
Prizes
Retro Wireless Mouse
Best Use of Vultr
Challenge
Vultr empowers hackers to bring their high-performance projects to life instantly; providing everything from the speed of one-click deployment and scalable cloud compute, to specialized Vultr Cloud GPUs that can power AI-driven applications. We want you to push the limits of what can be built when infrastructure is no longer the bottleneck!
Sign up for a Vultr account today and claim your free cloud credits! Take your next hack to the cloud with Vultr for a chance to win some awesome portable screens for you and your team!
Prizes
Portable Screens
Best Use of ElevenLabs
Challenge
Deploy natural, human-sounding audio with ElevenLabs. Create realistic, dynamic, and emotionally expressive voices for any project, from interactive AI companions to narrated stories and voice-enabled apps. ElevenLabs will empower you to build rich, immersive experiences without the need for actors or complex audio production, using simply the power of AI.
Integrate fully autonomous audio experiences into your hack with ElevenLabs and give your project a voice, along with giving your team the chance to win some wireless earbuds!
Prizes
Wireless Earbuds
Best Use of Auth0
Challenge
Auth0 wants your applications to be secure! Why spend hours building features like social sign-in, Multi-Factor Authentication, and passwordless log-in when you can enable them through Auth0 straight out of the box? You can also secure your AI applications with Auth0 for AI Agents.
Auth0 is free to try, doesn’t require a credit card, and allows for up to 7,000 free active users and unlimited log-ins. Make your new account today and use any of the Auth0 APIs for a chance to win a pair of wireless headphones for you and each member of your team!
Prizes
Wireless Headphones
Best Domain Name from GoDaddy Registry
Challenge
GoDaddy Registry is giving you everything you need to be the best hacker no matter where you are. Register your domain name with GoDaddy Registry for a chance to win some amazing prizes!
Prizes
Digital Gift Card