The Best Voyager Hack is awarded to the team whose project demonstrates exceptional innovation, functionality, and overall excellence in the HackVoyager Path. This category encompasses projects that excel in various aspects, including creativity, technical complexity, impact, and execution. It recognizes the team that has pushed the boundaries of what is possible in 36 hours and built something incredible.

The Best General Hack is awarded to the team whose project demonstrates exceptional innovation, functionality, and overall excellence in the General Path. This category encompasses projects that excel in various aspects, including creativity, technical complexity, impact, and execution. It recognizes the team that has pushed the boundaries of what is possible in 36 hours and built something incredible.

EPOMAKER Mechanical Keyboard for each member

The Best Beginner Hack prize recognizes the outstanding achievement of a team with limited prior experience in coding or hackathons. This category celebrates the journey of learning and discovery, rewarding teams that demonstrate impressive creativity, effort, and progress in their first hackathon endeavor.

Note: At least half of the team members need to be first-time hackers to qualify for this prize.

SONY Headphone for each member

Most voted hack on Devpost by attendees.

MARSHALL Speakers + $50 donation to a charity of choice for each member

The Most Impactful prize recognizes the project that has the potential to create the most significant positive change or address a pressing societal issue. Whether through addressing environmental concerns, improving accessibility, or tackling social injustices, among many other possibilities, this category highlights projects that aim to make a tangible difference in the world.

FUJIFILM Instax Mini 12 Camera (film included) for each member

Awarded to the team that delivers the most intuitive, polished, and delightful user experience. This prize recognizes thoughtful design decisions, strong visual hierarchy, accessibility, and seamless interaction — from first impression to final click. If your product feels effortless to use and looks great doing it, this one's for you.

NINJA Coffee Machine for each member

The Most Creative prize celebrates the team that shows the highest level of originality, imagination, and ingenuity in their project. This category rewards innovation and unconventional thinking, honoring projects that showcase unique approaches to problem-solving or introduce novel concepts and ideas.

NERF Gun + Walkie Talkie for each member

This award celebrates projects that are delightfully impractical — but still well-designed and fully functional. We're not looking for broken demos or unfinished apps, but thoughtfully built projects that explore fun, novel, or whimsical ideas rather than serious real-world problems.

1st Place: $2,000 for the team + JBL Tour One M2 Headphones for each member | 2nd Place: $500 for the team + $100 Amazon Gift Card for each member

Sponsor: Stripe

Build a well-crafted API, focusing on the surface, developer experience, and correctness. Focus on clarity, predictable behavior, and useful documentation that will delight developers. More info at hackillinois.org/stripe_track.pdf.

1st Place: $2,000 for the team + $5,000 in Modal Credits per person + Trip to SF or NY Office with lunch with Modal team | 2nd Place: $500 for the team + $1,000 in Modal Credits + AirPods for each member | 3rd Place: $1,000 in Modal Credits + AirPods for each member

Sponsor: Modal

Modal is AI infrastructure developers love, used by companies like Ramp, Suno, and Lovable. With flexible GPU compute, code sandboxes, and storage, you can use Modal to run inference or train coding agents, voice agents, and more. For the Inference Track, we're looking for ambitious applications running inference on Modal to solve a real-world problem.

Check event announcements for $250 in free credits.

1st Place: $1,500 for the team + Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses for each member + CAT Swag + Pitch presentation to a Caterpillar Executive | 2nd Place: $700 for the team + Gaming Keyboard for each member + CAT Swag + Pitch to a Caterpillar Executive | 3rd Place: $300 for the team + Gaming Keyboard for each member + CAT Swag + Share hack with a Caterpillar Executive

Sponsor: Caterpillar

Use your creativity to build an AI solution that pushes the boundaries of what's possible in field operations and logistics. Show how AI can make inspections, parts identification, and site planning smarter, faster, and safer. More info at hackillinois.org/caterpillar_track.pdf.

1st Place: $2,000 for the team + Ride Along at Coal Valley Ranch Demo Site (May 15th) + Conference call with John Deere leadership + Extra hardware kit | 2nd Place: $500 for the team + YETI Rambler for each member | 3rd Place: John Deere Merch for each member

Sponsor: John Deere

The Best Hardware Hack prize honors the team that demonstrates excellence in integrating hardware components into their project. From IoT devices to robotics, this category celebrates projects that leverage physical computing elements to create innovative solutions and interactive experiences. More info at hackillinois.org/johndeere_track.pdf.

$5,000 in Cloudflare Credits for each member

Sponsor: Cloudflare

You might know Cloudflare from just stopping the bad guys with DDoS protection, security, and global scale. But there's much more than that. There is an entire developer platform, including primitives that you can use to build whatever you build during this hackathon. Show us what you got!

$5,000 in OpenAI API Credits for each member

Sponsor: OpenAI

More info coming soon!

$300 Gift Card for each member

Sponsor: Capital One

More info coming soon!

Meta RayBans for each member

Sponsor: Supermemory

Use Supermemory's Context Engineering APIs to build an app that remembers, understands, and adapts to its users. Leverage Retrieval, Memory, User Profiles, Connectors, or Multi-modal Extractors — or combine them all. Use the free tier at supermemory.ai. If you run out of credits, go to the Supermemory booth to top up.

$5,000 in Crypto for the team and Ledger Nano S Plus for each team member

Sponsor: Solana

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

1st Place: $300 in prepaid AmEx gift cards for the team | 2nd Place: $120 in prepaid AmEx gift cards for the team | 3rd Place: Anker USB-C Hubs for each team member

Sponsor: Actian

Build an AI application using Actian VectorAI DB. We're looking for creative implementations that showcase vector search capabilities — examples include RAG systems, recommendation engines, semantic search applications, or real-time AI solutions.

How to Participate: Check event announcements

Note: Prizes are quality-gated. If fewer than 3 teams meet quality standards, prizes are awarded only to qualifying teams. Feedback for Actian is required.

$300 in Platform Credits + 5 months free OpenClaw ($100 value) for each member

Sponsor: Aedify.AI

This prize will be awarded to the most novel project that best utilizes Aedify's deployment and platform resources. The project must be successfully deployed with a live, external domain and must be functional.

Wireless Earbuds

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!

Links:
https://mlh.link/elevenlabs

Google Swag Kits

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?

Links:
https://mlh.link/gemini

Logitech Webcam & A chance to meet with the Reach Capital Investors

AI has upended what we can accomplish with technology. Reach Capital invests in the next generation of founders and technical talent, and they want you to use AI to support the future of work and uplevel the labor force.
While the frontline economy, made up of industries like construction, retail, healthcare, and more, represents 70% of the global workforce, these workers often have the least access to cutting-edge tools. Your challenge is to build an AI-powered solution for these frontline workers that meets them where they are - on the job, on the go, and in the flow of their daily work.
The winning team will receive a Logitech webcam for each member, and you'll also be one of ten winning teams across MLH events considered for a grand prize of discussing your creation with Reach Capital's team of expert investors.
Interested in working at world-changing startups? Reach's 130+ portfolio companies - including Replit, Brilliant, ClassDojo, GPTZero, and Desmos - are always looking for the next wave of talent. Share what you're studying, building, or exploring, and Reach will connect you to career-defining opportunities. Add your profile and join the hackers already in the Reach talent network.

Links:
https://mlh.link/reach-talent

Fitbit Inspire & Presage Perks

Presage is pioneering the Human Sensing Layer, enabling any application to understand a person's real-time physical and emotional state. With Presage, you can leverage clinically-proven vital signs, movement, emotion, and/or focus tracking to build a project that gives the standard camera super powers.
Use any of the Presage SDKs to integrate capabilities like real-time heart rate, breathing rate, engagement levels, and facial expressions into your hack with just a few lines of code.

- Immersive Gaming & Entertainment: Dynamically change game difficulty or story elements based on a player's excitement or focus levels.
- Contactless Wellness & Fitness: Build a non-invasive app that monitors stress, recovery, or fitness performance.
- Accessibility & Security: Utilize vital signs for effortless authentication, or to enhance accessibility.
- Productivity: Design a tool that tracks focus or stress.

Build your next hack with Presage and show us the future of human-computer interaction! Win awesome prizes along for with the following perks from the Presage team:

- Free refills for Presage Development credits to accelerate you through your next three months of building
- 30% off all Presage usage charges for your first year after going live

Links:
https://mlh.link/presage-sdk
https://mlh.link/presage

Retro Wireless Mouse

DigitalOcean offers a reliable and easy-to-use cloud platform for every stage of your project. Leverage core services like Droplets, Managed Databases, and App Platform to build, deploy, and scale your application effortlessly. Building with AI? DigitalOcean Gradient™ AI enables you to build, train, and deploy machine learning models, including access to GPU infrastructure and serverless inference!
Sign up for DigitalOcean today and get $200 worth of free credits that you can use towards building your next great hack. Build with DigitalOcean's robust cloud infrastructure for a chance to win some great prizes for you and each of your teammates!

Links:
https://mlh.link/digitalocean-signup
http://mlh.link/digitalocean

M5Stack Tab5

Play with industry-leading LLMs on a single account using the Snowflake APIs. Adding AI capabilities into your application can be as simple as a single CURL command to Snowflake's REST API.
Build customized applications, RAG powered chat bots, or embed AI-powered features into your app in half the time with half the hassle. Get started for free with a special, student 120-day Snowflake trial and check out this repository for an example of the Snowflake REST API in action.

Links:
https://mlh.link/snowflake-signup
https://mlh.link/snowflake-tutorial
https://mlh.link/snowflake

Desktop Microphone & a Free .Tech Domain Name for up to 10 years!

Make your Team's Achievements timeless: Win a .Tech Domain Name for up to 10 years to Showcase and Expand Your Project, Plus Desktop Mics for Effortless Collaboration on Zoom, empowering you to build even more cool things together!

Links:
https://get.tech/mlh