AI Agents & MCP Hardware Hackathon Sponsored by OpenAI & CrewAI & Nevermined

​​AI Agent, MCP & Sales Hackathon
📍 Frontier Tower, San Francisco
🗓 January 10–11, 2026
⏰ Daily start time: Saturday 10:00 AM - Sunday 7:00 PM

​​The ESI x Korea Investments AI Agent, MCP & Sales Hackathon is a two-day, execution-focused hackathon for founders, engineers, and early-stage startups building AI agents, MCP systems, and scalable growth engines. The event blends product building, AI agent development, and sales execution, challenging teams to ship real systems, test them through outreach and traction experiments, and iterate fast.

​​Participants will build alongside experienced speakers, operators, and renowned judges, connect with startups that are hiring and recruiters, and compete for $6,000 in prizes plus guaranteed investor interviews. This hackathon is designed for builders who want to leave with real progress, traction, and strong connections.

​​Sponsors

​CrewAI & Nevermined & Cline & ​OpenAI & Google Cloud & ProxLock & Rilo & Kalibr & Minimax

​​Tracks

• ​B2B SaaS Growth

• ​Hardware and Physical Products

• ​AI for Manufacturing

• ​AI for Healthcare

• ​AI Agents and MCP Systems

• ​Growth and Sales Systems

• ​Agent Monetization

• ​Existing Startups Traction Acceleration

• ​Open Innovation

• ​Made By Rilo

​​Agenda Overview

​​Day 1 — Build, Activate, Execute

​​Start: 10:30 AM — Networking & Refreshments, Helen Zeng and Opening Welcome

• ​11:00 AM Check in and arrival

• ​11:30 AM Opening welcome and event overview

• ​12:00 PM Hacking Starts!

• ​12:30 PM Sales and growth panel

• ​1:30 PM Build sprint one and outreach launch

• ​3:00 PM Mentor and technical office hours

• ​4:30 PM Structured networking session

• ​5:30 PM Build sprint two and iteration

• ​7:00 PM Community mixer and optional networking

​​Day 2 — Iterate, Pitch, and Demo

​​Start: 11:00 AM

• ​11:00 AM Morning traction stand up

• ​11:30 AM Build sprint three and final execution

• ​1:30 PM Pitch and traction clinic

• ​2:30 PM Final office hours

• ​4:00 PM Final demos and pitches

• ​6:00 PM Judging and awards

• ​7:00 PM Post-event networking and next steps

​​Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner provided with diet-friendly protein & vegan options

​​🎯 What to Expect:

• ​​​Collaborative team challenges + hardware/AI innovation tracks

• ​​​Google Cloud Hands-on Workshop with Mansi More - Learn to Build, Test, and Deploy Multimodal AI with the New Vertex AI Studio and Gemini

• ​Cline demonstration and workshop lead by Tony Loehr on creating MCP Servers and adding them to the MCP Marketplace, as well as using Google Vertex within Cline

• ​​​$4,000+ in cash prizes + entry into investment accelerator

• ​​​Hosted by Iman Schaefer, Bee Schaefer, Ashley Kim, Alex Aghili, and Eric Kim

​​⚖️ Judges:

​Judges for this event were selectively chosen based on senior technical leadership, industry reputation, and demonstrated expertise in evaluating complex, real-world software and AI systems. Many of them are startup founders, CEOs, senior engineering leaders, product executives, and domain experts from globally recognized technology companies, venture-backed startups, and investment and accelerator ecosystems.

​Judges will be responsible for reviewing, comparing, and ranking submissions from multiple competing teams, many of which are led by seasoned founders and senior technologists. Judging criteria include technical innovation, system architecture, execution quality, scalability, and real-world applicability, with evaluations contributing directly to finalist selection and award determinations.

​🧑‍⚖️ Judges List

• ​​​Tak Lim Lee | Korea Investment Accelerator

• ​​​Andrew McGrath | CEO of REALLM Realty

• ​Helen Zeng | Financial Strategist

• ​Anand Vallamsetla | Founder & CEO of Resilience AI, AI Advisor @ The Why Man, ex-Google

• ​Josh Wadinski | Nevermined

• ​Sanskar Jain | Co-founder at Entvin AI | YCombinator | IIT Bombay

• ​Ritik Vijayvergiya | Vice President at WorldQuant LLC | IIT Delhi

• ​Shri Lakshmi Rajagopal | Senior QA Engineer @ DHCS

• ​Georgi Boby | Founder @ Rilo | Ex Cloudchef | IITB

• ​Zack Track | SWE @ Tribe

• ​Wayne Fenton | @ Light Links & Experienced Technology innovator

• ​Andres Nino | Co-Founder & CEO VibeCo.ai

• ​Venkata Sai Kishore Modalavalasa | Securing Everything AI | Straiker | OWASP

• ​Felipe Salinas | Founder @Taxflow

• ​Gokul Chandra | Containers - AWS

• ​Vanshika Gupta | Growth & Product Marketing

• ​Joseph Yeh | Executive & Technical Recruiter for deep tech startups + alumni of LinkedIn, Magic Leap, Yahoo, Apex.AI, Lytro, Sunshine, Riviera Partners

• ​Nandini Singh | Tech PM | Product & Data Science

• ​Apurv Naman | Product Manager @ Nvidia -Physical AI

• ​James Lee | VP of User Experience & Front-End - ex Microsoft, Samsung, GE, Baker&Hughes, Lucid Motors

• ​Ritu Singh | Advisory Software Developer & Data Scientist

• ​Roan Weigert | DevRel AI Engineer @ Aparavi & Generative AI YouTube Host

• ​Elias Tounzal | Senior software engineer

• ​Shubham Anandani | Engineering Manager at LinkedIn

• ​Neel Makhecha | Software Engineer at Splunk AI

• ​Caesar Lastowski | Founding Member @ Operand

• ​Rohan Benkar | Software Architect – Founding AI Team at Coursera

• ​Rohil Bansal | Software Engineer at Meta | Ex-AWS

• ​Josh Lee | Software Engineer at Meta | Ex-AW

• ​Claire Kyung MinKim | Claude Sonnet & SoundHound AI enthusiast. #1 Semiconductor Analyst 2020, South Korea (voted). Author of “Semiconductor Analyst’s Research Habits”

• ​Yunbin Bae | Founder @Heurica

• ​William Yoo | Investor @ Entrepreneurship First

​And More!

​​DJ Afterparty 🎆🎉🎈🎊 7 PM - 10 PM

​​Special thank you to Santa Cruz Works & CIED for supporting the E.S.I. founders' community!

​With over 80,000 members across over 100 chapters globally, Dabl Club (www.dabl.club) is a third space for developers to learn, launch, and grow. Join your local meetup or start your own guild.

​

​​OffChain is a global community with over 70 chapters around the world for Web3 professionals, tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs. We welcome like-minded people to build and connect. Each chapter/city aims to have a base of regular casual social gatherings or speaking events so we can bridge and connect.

​

​This event is hosted at the Frontier Tower:

​We are transforming a 16-floor tower in San Francisco into a self-governed vertical village—a hub for frontier technologies and creative arts. Tier-one labs presenting AI, Ethereum, biotech, neuroscience, longevity, robotics, human flourishing, and arts & music. These floors will house innovators and creators pushing the boundaries of human potential in a post-AI-singularity world.

​Apply here for founding citizenship: https://frontiertower.io/apply

​Why should I become a citizen?

• ​Be part of creating the first self-governed vertical village

• ​Connect with the most creative people in the city

• ​Get access to all floors, free event space & movement floor

​Website: https://frontiertower.io/

​Need more reading? Visit https://frontiertower.notion.site/