A 24-hour hackathon titled “Hack Armenia,” focused on the use of large language models, was held on August 8 to 9 at the AI9 Startup Campus in Yerevan.

The event was held with the support of Armenia’s Ministry of High-Tech Industry and the Agency of Digital Government.

The hackathon brought together developers, researchers, students, startup founders and other AI specialists. The goal was to turn new knowledge and technologies into practical solutions for Armenia.

Participants worked in teams of three to four people. During the 24-hour event, they developed ideas, created working prototypes, tested their solutions and presented the results to an expert jury.

The jury included Gevorg Mantashyan, Acting First Deputy Minister of High-Tech Industry; David Zohrabyan of OpenAI; David Arakelyan of Eleveight AI; Ara Hakhverdyan of AI9; Vazgen Hakobjanyan of Magical Labs; Artavazd Yeritsyan of Async; and Vazgen Badalyan of Evidenso.

The jury evaluated the projects based on the relevance of the ideas, technical implementation, measurable results and their potential for real-world use.

“Our goal is to ensure that the development of artificial intelligence in Armenia is not limited to knowledge and research. It is important to create an environment where knowledge can quickly become working solutions, new products and companies. Hackathons like this bring together talent, technology and real-world problems,” Mantashyan said.

The main prizes were sponsored by OpenAI. The first-place team received $12,000 worth of OpenAI API credits, the second-place team received $7,500 worth, and the third-place team received $5,000 worth.

Eleveight AI also provided a special prize of $5,000 worth of GPU computing resources.

The hackathon was organized by the Armenia LLM Summer School, AI9 Startup Campus and YerevaNN.

The initiative aims to support the development of Armenia’s AI community and help turn new knowledge into practical solutions, technological products and innovative projects.

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