Essex AI Hackathon 2025

Join us at our monthly in person Meetups and weekly online meetups to take part in the OpenAI Open Model Hackathon and to present your project at an AI event during Chelmsford Science Festival.

Whether you are new to using open large language models or looking to win one of the multiple $5,000 / GPU prizes we'd love you to join us either working alone or joining a team. Over 18s only.

We'll have an AI evening on Thursday 23rd October at Patch, Chelmsford with talks and your projects on display. (more details later)

Categories are :

• Best Overall — The absolutely most interesting application of gpt-oss.
• Best In Robotics — The most effective use of gpt-oss models in an IRL robot. (Record a video of it in action!)
• Weirdest Hardware — The most creative and interesting hardware product that uses gpt-oss models.
• Best Local Agent — The most useful agentic application of gpt-oss with no internet access.
• Most Useful Fine-Tune — The most effective use of gpt-oss for specialized domains, through fine-tuning.
• Wildcard — The most unexpected use of gpt-oss that OpenAI didn’t think of.
• For Humanity — The best application of gpt-oss that benefits all of humanity.

More details of events and hackathons on the Southend Tech website.

We look forward to seeing some great projects.