Overview
GenAI Genesis is Canada's largest AI hackathon, bringing together builders to transform bold ideas into real-world impact. Organized by the GenAI Genesis Foundation and in its 3rd year, the event connects students with mentors, cutting-edge tools, and industry leaders to design and deploy AI-powered solutions. Whether you're a first-time hacker or a seasoned developer, GenAI Genesis is open to all!
Organizers & Partners
GenAI Genesis is run by the GenAI Genesis Foundation, which collaborates closely with student communities across the University of Toronto. Partner organizations include:
- GDG - UTSC (Google Developer Group UofT Scarborough)
- UTMIST (UofT Machine Intelligence Student Team)
The event is supported by sponsors and other industry partners
Logistics
Date: March 13–15, 2026
Locations:
- In-person
- Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship (MY), 55 St George St
- Convocation hall (CH), 31 King's College Cir
- Bahen Centre for Information Technology (BA), 40 St George St
- Virtual
Participants: 1,000+ in-person hackers, 200+ online
Catering: All meals covered!
Find more details on your hacker package!
Requirements
To ensure a smooth judging process and to maximize your project's impact, please prepare the following for your submission:
Write-Up
Your project submission must include a comprehensive write-up that addresses the following key points:
- Project Inspiration: Share the motivation behind your project. This could include the problems you're aiming to solve, any personal experiences that led to the idea, or why you believe your project matters in the context of generative AI.
- Technology Stack: Detail the technologies, frameworks, and tools you utilized to bring your project to life. Please include:
- Languages: List the programming languages used.
- Frameworks and Libraries: Mention any frameworks or libraries that played a critical role.
- Platforms: Highlight any platforms or cloud services (e.g., Google Cloud) that your project leverages.
- Tools: Any other tools or software that were essential to your development process.
- Product Summary: Provide a clear and concise summary of what your product does. Describe its features, the user experience, and how it addresses the problem(s) you identified. Highlight any innovative aspects of your solution and how it utilizes AI or other technologies to achieve its goals.
- AI use: Was more than 70% of the code generated by AI? (Just a survey question and will not be used in grading!)
Code
- GitHub Repository: Include a link to the public GitHub repository containing your project's code. Ensure the repository is well-organized and contains a README file with setup instructions and an overview of the project.
- Important: Your project will not be eligible for judging if the GitHub link is not provided or if the repository is not accessible by the judges.
Submission Guidelines:
- Commits: To maintain the integrity of the competition, ensure there are no commits to the repository before the official start of the hackathon. Any commits made before this time could disqualify your project.
- README File: The README should effectively communicate what your project is, how to set it up, and any other necessary documentation to understand its structure and functionality.
Virtual hackers are expected to adhere to the same guidelines and practices as In-Person hackers. However, the key distinction lies in the judging process, which takes place virtually with a panel of virtual judges. These hackers exclusively compete for the virtual prize categories.
By adhering to these submission requirements, you ensure that judges can fairly assess your project and appreciate the hard work and innovation that went into its development. We look forward to seeing how your ideas will push the boundaries of what's possible with AI!
Prizes
[Sponsored] TD Best AI Hack to Detect Financial Fraud (In-Person Only)
Build AI that catches what humans miss. We're looking for the sharpest, most innovative approach to detecting fraudulent transactions, suspicious patterns, or financial anomalies in real time. Speed, accuracy, and clever use of AI wins.
The Winning Team will receive DJI 4K Drones
[Sponsored] Sun Life Best Health Care Hack Using Agentic AI (In-Person Only)
Build an Agentic AI solution that helps Canadians monitor or improve their physical (including dental) or mental health. Projects may focus on prevention, symptom management, or treatment tracking—across general wellness or specific conditions (excluding time‑management tools for stress).
The Winning Team will receive Projectors
[Sponsored] Bitdeer Beyond the Prototype: Best Production-Ready AI Tool (In-Person Only)
Most hackathon projects struggle to move beyond basic prototypes into production-ready tools. This track challenges you to build a high-performance, AI-powered solution that solves real-world pain points for developers, researchers, or engineers. We are looking for tools that demonstrate technical depth and practical utility. The most polished and technically ambitious solution wins as we bridge the gap between "side projects" and professional-grade engineering.
The Winning Team will receive Gaming Chairs
[Sponsored] Moorcheh AI Best AI Application that Leverages Efficient Memory (In-Person Only)
Build anything intelligent with Moorcheh’s semantic memory engine!
Leverage high-fidelity storage, stateful context, and explainable semantic retrieval to power context-aware agents, RAG pipelines, knowledge assistants, or creative AI tools that truly remember and reason.
No boilerplate required — just integrate the Moorcheh API (grab your key at https://console.moorcheh.ai/api-keys) and star our Python SDK repo: https://github.com/moorcheh-ai/moorcheh-python-sdk.
Join our discord : https://discord.com/invite/CyxRFQSQ3p
Find more about challege : https://www.notion.so/neelbuilds/Best-use-of-Moorcheh-31d26ed81c92804f82c1f8ff609f52ac
The Winning Team will receive Keyboards and Opportunity to interview for co-op
[Sponsored] Google Best AI for Community Impact (In-Person Only)
Awarded to the team that creates the most impactful AI solution to address a real community need and deliver meaningful social benefit.
The Winning Team will receive Eco Dots
[Sponsored] Google Best Sustainability AI Hack (Online Only)
Awarded to the team that creates the most innovative AI solution to address environmental or sustainability challenges and drive meaningful real-world impact
The Winning Team will receive Gift Cards
[Sponsored] Best AI Hack using IBM Technology (In-Person Only)
Build an AI solution using at least one IBM Cloud service (e.g., watsonx.ai, Db2, Langflow) that addresses a real business challenge in any major industry (Financial Services, Insurance, Tech, Telecom, Retail, Energy/Utilities, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Agriculture, Research, or Public Sector). Your project should improve workflows, boost productivity, or enhance decision-making while demonstrating responsible and secure AI practices.
The Winning Team will receive:
- IBM Office Tour
- Resume Roast + Personal Branding Session by IBM Experts
- Q&A with Technology Sales Managers
- Career Panel with New Hires
- IBM Swag Pack
[Sponsored] Borderpass Best hack for Demos and QA (In-Person Only)
Create a platform for on-demand sandbox environments with production-parity behavior and zero real data. Teams can define reusable demo or QA scenarios that control sandbox contents and enabled features, with a lightweight way to capture walkthroughs and turn them into reusable templates. Each scenario launch produces a fresh, shareable sandbox with synthetic data, role-based access, and lifecycle controls like reset and expiry—all managed through a control panel or API.
The Winning Team will receive $1000 from BorderPass
[GenAI Genesis] Best GenAI Hardware Hack (In-Person Only)
Awarded to the project that best utilizes hardware
The Winning Team will receive Arduino Starter Kits
[GenAI Genesis] Top 2 Teams - Team 1 (In-Person Only)
Awarded to the project that overall best utilizes generative AI for human empowerment - utilizing AI ingeniously and intelligently.
The Winning Team will receive Meta Quests
[GenAI Genesis] Top 2 Teams - Team 2 (In-Person Only)
Awarded to the project that overall best utilizes generative AI for human empowerment - utilizing AI ingeniously and intelligently.
The Winning Team will receive Sony XM5
[GenAI Genesis] Top 2 Teams - Team 1 (Online Only)
Awarded to the best projects of virtual hackers.
The Winning Team will receive Gift Cards
[GenAI Genesis] Top 2 Teams - Team 2 (Online Only)
Awarded to the best project of virtual hackers
The Winning Team will receive Gift Cards
[GenAI Genesis] Best AI Education Hack (In-Person Only)
Awarded to the project that reimagines learning with AI, making education more personalized, accessible, and engaging.
The Winning Team will receive Lego Star Wars Set
[GenAI Genesis] Best Beginner AI Hack (In-Person Only)
Awarded to the most impressive AI project built by a beginner team, showcasing strong learning, creativity, and execution.[majority of team members must be first time hackers]
The Winning Team will receive Logitech WebCam
[GenAI Genesis] TOP 10 Team - Finalists (In-Person Only)
TOP 10 of Best Projects at GenAI Genesis Hackathon
Total Prizes Value
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
Judges
Abhijit Chanda
Tredence, Director - Data Analytics & AI
Achin (Ace) Kulshrestha
Google, Staff Software Engineer
Adibvafa Fallahpour
NVIDIA, AI Researcher
Adrian Seeley
Google, VP
Alex Cheah
Lionpeak Partners, Investor
Ali Abbasi Tadi
TD, AI Security Engineer, PhD
Ameya Pore
UofT, Postdoctoral Fellow
Andrew Li
Angela mostafa
April Guo
Anthropic, Solutions Architect, Applied AI
Arman jafarnezhad
Equinix, Senior Software Engineer
Ashwin Balu
IBM, Principal Canada Manager
Avirek Ghatia
Slack, Staff Software Engineer
Azin Asgarian
Georgian, AI Technial Lead
Bhawna Agarwal
Charles Lai
Google, Technical Solutions Engineering Manager
Dan Weber
Daniel Zhang
Datacurve, Ex-Founding Ops
Dave Rajavickneswaran
Debra Henry
IBM, Canada Lead, Employee Engagement & Early Talent Program (ELH & Interns)
Dev Maharaj
Divya Jyoti
Eric Zhang
Suno, Research Engineer
Faraz Khoubsirat
NVIDIA, Software Engineer (LLM Inference)
Gaurang katyal
Product @ Roblox
Geoffrey Low
Guan Zheng Huang
Hadi Alsibassi
Harikishan Thakar
Hassan Ismail
Heather Xu
Hetkumar Patel
Jaehyeong (Jaden) Park
Sentra, Founding Engineer
James Kokoska
Jaskirat singh
Humonas, CEO
Jason Dsouza
Prev Harvard, AI Research
Jay-jay
Microsoft AI, Member of Tech Staff
Jeffrey Kwong
Google, Customer Engineer
Jesse Lee
Jinbae Bang
Joey Fascio
Google, Account Executive, Mid-Market Sales, Google Customer Solutions
John J Fong
Manulife, Senior Director
Karanjot Singh Saggu
Kevin Cy Chen
Kieran D'Mello
Kshitij Goyal
Miovision, Machine Learning Researcher
Lakshya Agarwal
Tavily, Forward Deployed Engineer
Manraj S. Pannu
Spin Master, Process Development Manager
Matthew Longland
Mayank Vats
Workday, Principal Software Engineer
Michael Pietrocarlo
Mikhail Baranchuk
Google, Software Developer
Mykola Haliullin
Snap, AR Engineer
Neelkumar patel
Edge ai innovations, Software Developer
Neha Heera
Toast, Senior Engineering Manager
Nitin Kumar
Marriott International, Director Data Science
Oliver Lambson
Karoo, Co-Founder
Paridhi Goel
Paul Dong
Snowflake, Research Engineer
Plawan Kumar Rath
Meta, Software Engineer
Priyanshu Mahey
Microsoft, AI/ML Software Engineer
Rajan Agarwal
Proximal, Member of Technical Staff
Ramanpreet Singh Khinda
Linkedin, Staff Software Engineer (Tech Lead)
Rasa Rahnema
Reinaldo Rivas
Kenvue, Senior IT Manager
Robert Chin
Ronak Jani
Sally Daub
Sammy Lam
Mimecast, Software Engineer
Sara Janmohamed
Shadab Hussain
MathCo, Lead Engineer - Data & GenAI
Shane Nazareth
Shashwat Jain
Amazon, Software Development Engineer
Simerus Mahesh
Forge, Founding Engineer
Simon Ryu
Sofia Jia
Sravani Lingam
Infor, Manager - Science
Srinath Gopinath
U.S. Bank, VP Observability/Reliability Engineering
Subodh Kumar
BriskAI, Founder
Sudhakar Karuppannan
Udit Misra
Salesforce, Senior Member Technical Staff
Vinicius Porfirio Purgato
PwC, AI Engineer & Consultant
Walter Kurzatz
Yannick Lallement
Yatish Gupta
Google, Staff Software Engineer
Zalmy Karimi
Q4, Software Engineer
Sriram Selvam
Microsoft AI, Senior Software Engineer
David He
UofT, PhD candidate
Junzhe (Victor) Li
Vector Institute, ML
Matthew Tamura
Smita Challu Tulsani
LinkLoop.ai, Founder
Rishab Bansal
Tesla, Senior Software Engineer
Paul Dong
Snowflake, Research Engineer
Pierre-Antoine LaFayette
Sally Tomasecic
Sam Li
Smile Thanapattheerakul
Jaturong Kongmanee
Judging Criteria
-
Criteria 1: Innovation & Originality
Focuses on the project's ability to introduce novel concepts, methods, or applications, and to demonstrate creative problem-solving. -
Criteria 2: Technical Complexity & Execution
Operational effectiveness, code quality, and success in meeting specified requirements and performance standards. -
Criteria 3: Product Experience & Design
Overall structure of the project, including visual appeal user experience, and the organization of its architecture and code. -
Criteria 4: Impact & Practical Value
The project's potential to address real-world problems, create positive change, and contribute to meaningful outcomes.
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
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