NVIDIA Spark Hack: Seattle

See. Do. Spark.

Build AI that perceives the world, takes autonomous action, and pushes the limits of what's possible—all running on DGX Spark. NVIDIA is bringing the Spark Hack Series to Seattle.

This event brings together frontier builders, applied ML engineers, systems thinkers, and startup teams to explore what's possible when vision AI, agentic workflows, and open models meet high-performance local compute. Whether you're building systems that see, systems that act, or something no one's thought of yet—bring it.

We'll provide every team with an Acer Veriton GN100—powered by the NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip—to use throughout the weekend.

Co-Host: Ascend backs pre-seed founders solving the biggest problems in enterprise AI and deep tech.

How to Participate

This hackathon is limited to a maximum of 35 teams. Once we reach capacity, additional applicants will be placed on a waitlist and notified if a spot becomes available.

Application Guidelines: You must be able to attend the event in person. Team Size: Minimum 3 members, maximum 5 members. Priority: Full team applications will be prioritized over individual applications. We highly encourage you to form and apply as a team. Individuals: If you apply as an individual, team formation will happen the first day of the event. If accepted, you will be required to compete with your assigned team.

Challenge Tracks

Teams can use any publicly available open data as long as the problem you're solving is real. The City of Seattle open data portal is a great starting point, but you're not limited to it.

Each track defines how your AI works, not what problem it solves—teams are free to tackle any real-world challenge through the lens of their chosen track.

1. See Focus: AI that understands the physical world. The Goal: Build systems that process visual data—cameras, video streams, images, satellite imagery, maps—to detect, classify, or respond to what's happening in real space. Teams in this track will work with NVIDIA's VSS (Visual Search and Summarization) skills to build perception-first applications.

2. Do Focus: AI that plans, acts, and gets things done. The Goal: Build autonomous systems that don't just answer questions—they take action. Multi-step reasoning, tool use, API calls, data retrieval, decision-making across sources. This track is built for long-running agentic workflows that orchestrate across multiple tools and data sources.

3. Spark Focus: AI that surprises us. The Goal: No constraints on modality or approach. Build something generative. Create a digital twin. Remix the tracks above. The only rule: build it on the Spark and make us wish we'd thought of it first.

What You Can Win

Qualifying submissions, depending on the unique track requirements, are eligible to win the following and more: Acer Veriton GN100 Brev credits Investor meetings Social media amplification

Preparation Resources

Start Building on DGX Spark: Find instructions and examples to run AI w