Mobile AI Hackathon
The Mobile AI Hackathon brings together Melbourne’s most ambitious developers, designers, founders and creators for one intense weekend of building AI-native apps for Apple platforms.
Over approximately 30 hours, you’ll form a team, take an idea from concept to a working prototype, learn directly from experienced builders, and present your creation to a panel of founders, senior engineers, and industry partners. Expect workshops, mentoring, great food, new collaborators and a room full of people who genuinely want to ship something remarkable.
This is not a weekend of slide decks and hypothetical ideas. It is a hands-on build sprint focused on what becomes possible when intelligence runs directly on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro.
You might build:
A private, offline experience powered by an on-device LLM or vision model
An intelligent agent or assistant that feels native to the device
A multimodal product combining voice, camera, sensors and spatial computing
An AI application that creates meaningful social or community impact
Something nobody in the room has seen before
Projects will be judged on innovation, technical craft, impact and the quality of the live demo, with an A$6,000 prize pool across the grand prize, enterprise, visionOS, social-impact, beginner and People’s Choice categories.
Who should apply?
You do not need to arrive with a team or a finished idea.
We are looking for:
iOS, macOS, visionOS, AI/ML and full-stack developers
Product designers and creative technologists
Founders and independent builders
First-time hackers ready to learn
Experienced engineers ready to push the technology further
Whether you have spent years shipping Apple-platform products or are building your first serious prototype, there will be a place for you to contribute.
Event details
29–30 August 2026
Melbourne CBD
In person
Attendance is application-based, so we can create a strong, balanced room of builders across engineering, product, design and AI.
Bring your Mac, your curiosity and the willingness to build fast. (We also have a limited pool of loan devices available if required!)
Apply to join us and put intelligence in people’s pockets 🚀