Daytona at the AI Engine: Hackathon Summer Hack – Highlights & Winners
This August, more than 150 builders gathered in East London for two days of high-energy hacking at the AI Engine: Hackathon Summer Hack.
The challenge: build something real with AI.
The rewards: £5,000 in cash prizes, exclusive bounties, and tens of thousands of dollars in credits — including $60,000 from Daytona to help winners take their ideas to the next level.
The hackathon brought together engineers, founders, researchers, and AI enthusiasts from across Europe, supported by 3 venture organisers, 20 industry partners, and over 50 mentors, speakers, and judges.
Across two days:
61 teams formed
47 projects submitted
Dozens of agentic and AI-powered solutions explored
Beyond the code, participants discovered new technologies, launched collaborations, met potential cofounders, and even applied to accelerators on the spot.
Daytona’s Role in the Hackathon
Daytona supported the event by providing secure, elastic infrastructure for running AI-generated code and by sponsoring the Daytona Prize.
Our mission is to help developers move from concept to production without infrastructure bottlenecks, and the hackathon was a perfect showcase of that.
From the Daytona team, Ivan Dagelic (Software Engineer) and Marijan Cipcic (Principal Events Manager) attended in person — connecting with participants, supporting projects, and presenting the Daytona Prize to the winners.
Daytona Prize Winners
🏆 First Prize – 30K Daytona Credits
Team Clueless – Aryan Kaushik, Pratyaksh Mishra, Jeremy Shorter, Adam O'Neill
Project: An AI-powered assistant that overlays any web app to provide real-time, voice-guided, step-by-step walkthroughs — transforming onboarding and customer support into an interactive, personalized experience with no code changes required.
🥈 Second Prize – 20K Daytona Credits
Team The Waitlisters – Maxim Akishin, Janek Kochanowski
Project: A lightweight AI visibility platform for small businesses. In just three clicks, it tracks AI search visibility, suggests site optimizations, generates llms.txt files, and automates social media posting — helping SMBs compete in an AI-driven search landscape.
🥉 Third Prize – 10K Daytona Credits
Team Mosaic – Alvis Klarikkan, Enaiho Uwas-paul, Shivang Chaudhary
Project: An MVP for a logic-verifying multi-agent system designed to eliminate hallucinations in AI outputs. By orchestrating agent debates to simulate critical thinking, Mosaic offers bias-free, grounded decision support — starting with the financial sector and extending into healthcare, psychology, and beyond.
Why Hackathons Matter to Daytona
Events like the AI Engine: Hackathon are where future-defining AI products are born. They give builders the resources, mentorship, and infrastructure to move fast, test ideas, and collaborate with peers.
For Daytona, it’s a chance to see our infrastructure tested in real-world, high-pressure scenarios, and to support the teams shaping the next generation of AI tools.
A huge thank-you to main organizer Dawn Capital and fellow organizers Crane Venture Partners and Chapter One. Special congratulations to Dawn’s Zoe (Ziwen) Qin and the team for delivering such a seamless, high-impact event.
Photo credits: Adam Isfendiyar
