about this event
Put open models to work. What's one task from your work, studies, or everyday life you'd love an AI model to handle? Join Noetic and Nebius at Imperial College London for a day of building, experimenting, and turning ideas into working demos with open models on Nebius Token Factory. Build something useful, try something unusual, or test where today's models reach their limits. The challenge is open: pick a problem you care about and show what you can do.
There are roughly 60 places, and applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.
Need some inspiration? A research assistant that answers questions from papers or documents, with sources you can check. A workflow helper that sorts support tickets, extracts information from messy files, or turns meeting notes into action items. A coding companion that explains unfamiliar code, writes tests, or helps diagnose bugs. An agent experiment that tackles a real task — or a mini-benchmark comparing how different open models perform. Something unexpected: an interactive story, a learning tool, or a creative demo nobody has tried before. These are starting points. Bring your own idea and make it yours.
The day: 10:00 check-in, breakfast, account setup; 10:30 live Token Factory demo from the Nebius team; 10:50 challenge brief, questions, team formation; 11:30 build begins — lunch served, mentors on the floor; 14:00 midpoint check-in; 16:30 submissions close; 16:45 demos; 17:30 judging and prizes; 18:00 social and drinks.
Teams: teams of 3–5. Come with a team or come alone — team matching runs at the start of the day, and you can also find people in the group chat beforehand. Solo applicants are very welcome.
Support on the day: Nebius developers will be on site for a live Token Factory demo and free mentorship — helping you scope your idea, choose models, and work through problems as you build. Free tokens and free food throughout, so you can focus on the project and on the people around you.
What to bring: laptop, charger, and something you want to build. That's it.
The goal: a working example with a clear purpose. Show what your project does, where the models struggle, and why the idea matters.
Who we're looking for: engineers, ML and data science, product and design, researchers, founders — anyone who builds things. Roughly half students from Imperial, UCL, Oxford, Cambridge, LSE and KCL, half engineers a few years in. It's a good room to find people to build with.
Prizes: to be announced.
Partners: hosted by Noetic with Nebius. University partner: Imperial College London.
Filming: the organisers will be photographing and filming throughout the day and sharing a recap afterwards.
Practical details: Saturday 24 October 2026, 10:00–19:00, Imperial College London, South Kensington — exact building and room to follow. Applications take about three minutes. Mostly the organisers want to see something you've built.
when
Noetic X Nebius One Day Hackathon
Check-in, Token Factory demo, challenge brief, building, demos, judging, prizes and social.
◍ Imperial College Londontickets
| tickets | price | Fee | Status | description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General Admission | Free | Free | Available | Free entry; roughly 60 places, applications reviewed on a rolling basis. |