🏃 AMD Developer Hackathon: ACT II

Community Corner Announcements 🏃Hackathons
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Scroll down for Frequently Asked Questions :backhand_index_pointing_down:

Build AI agents and high-performance AI apps on AMD GPUs in the cloud.

Grab your ideas, spin up compute, and start building what’s next!

Start with $100 in AMD Developer Cloud credits and begin building right away.

Get access to hands-on tutorials, workshops, and curated learning resources to help you build faster and go further.

To unlock credits and join the hackathon, sign up now.

:money_bag: $10,000 total prize pool

Developers, builders, and innovators - bring your boldest ideas and let’s turn them into real AI systems on AMD.

:red_question_mark: Frequently asked questions

Last update: 6th July 2026

Everything you need to build and submit a competitive entry is now up: Participant Guide

:warning: Credits Notice

The hackathon has officially kicked off! A quick note on credits timing, especially if you’re just joining now:

If you registered by July 2nd, your hackathon credits are active from today, day one :tada:

If you’re registering on or after July 6th, you’re still very welcome to join; but your compute access and credits will only be allocated starting July 7th, not immediately.

Two separate types of credits, don’t mix them up:

  • Hackathon credits:
    Every participant gets $50 in Fireworks AI API credits (timing per above, day one if you registered by July 2nd, July 7th onward if you’re registering now or later). Details on AMD Developer Cloud GPU access will be shared shortly.

  • New member credits:
    Signing up for the AMD AI Developer Program for the first time gets you a separate $100 AMD Developer Cloud + $50 Fireworks AI API credits. This goes through its own manual approval process (2–3 business days) and runs independently of the hackathon registration cutoff, it’s on its own timeline no matter when you signed up.

Three tracks in the Hackathon, pick what fits you:

  • Track 1:
    General-Purpose AI Agent** Build an agent that handles tasks across 8 categories (factual Q&A, math reasoning, sentiment, summarization, NER, code debugging, logic puzzles, code generation) using Fireworks AI models. Submit a Docker image. Scored on an accuracy gate, then ranked by token efficiency.

    • Allowed models (Track 1):
      • minimax-m3
      • kimi-k2p7-code
      • gemma-4-31b-it
      • gemma-4-26b-a4b-it
      • gemma-4-31b-it-nvfp4

  • Track 2: Video Captioning Agent
    Build an agent that captions video clips in 4 styles (formal, sarcastic, humorous-tech, humorous-non-tech). Submit a Docker image: any model/API of your choice, no restrictions. Scored on caption accuracy + style match. **

  • Track 3: Unicorn (Open Innovation)
    No fixed task; build the most innovative, technically impressive project using AMD compute. Submit your GitHub repo, demo video, and slide deck. Automated pre-screening + human judges.

Keep in mind (all tracks):
Docker images (Tracks 1 & 2) must be publicly pullable and include a linux/amd64 manifest Image size capped at 10GB
No hardcoded/cached answers: evaluation uses unseen variants
Submissions are rate-limited, so test locally before repeated submits

GPU Access:
Use this link to get access to GPUs: https://notebooks.amd.com/hackathon
Read the full guide for exact I/O formats, environment variables, and scoring details.

The AMD Developer Hackathon: ACT II is a hands-on event for developers, founders, engineers, and builders who want to push what’s possible with AI on real infrastructure.
At the center of it: AI Agents - a space to explore intelligent workflows, automation, and real AI applications. Whether you’re just starting out or already building, you can jump in and start creating.
You’ll be working with AMD AI Developer Cloud, ROCm, and model APIs, all fully in the cloud, so you can focus on building instead of setup.

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I signed up for the hackathon on lablab.ai and then signed up for amd cloud. Please guide me how to get $100 credits in Cloud. I got $5.

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same for me i don’t know how to
i opened a ticket in discord but the moderator there tried to scam me telling me to execute a cmd command, how do i report him??

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To receive credits (only for new users):

Sign in to your AMD Developer program → select Member Perks → scroll down and click ‘Request Cloud Credits’. Once approved, we’ll send you an email to confirm your credits are ready.

@Muhammad_Usman_Qadee if you believe you’ve received the wrong amount, please send a message to devcloudrequests@amd.com, our team will take a look!

@ahmed_miloudi do you have a screenshot of your conversation with the mod? You can send it to me via DM.

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Thank you @Ayllee_AMD for reply. I have requested credits following the instructions. Excited for the hackathon and planning my steps :slight_smile:

github: uttarasawantgh (Uttara Sawant) ¡ GitHub

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i cant form my team can u pls contact me regarding that

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Hi Aylee,

I’m registered for the AMD Developer Hackathon starting in a few days, but my AMD lab account was blocked with the message: “security violation detected in your Jupyter notebook environment.”

I believe this may be a false positive. I was working through the official AMD AI Academy labs and completed 14 out of 17 courses in less than 20 hours. During the labs I had several Jupyter/kernel issues while following the course instructions involving vLLM, Ollama, Kubernetes, local servers, and repeated notebook restarts.

I’m concerned this block may prevent me from participating in the hackathon or accessing the required cloud/lab resources. Could someone please review my account and reset or unblock my Jupyter lab environment?

GitHub username: rthgit (Christian Quintino De Luca) ¡ GitHub

Thank you.

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Hi @Ranjani-R_AMD, @Allyee_AMD and the AMD AI team! I am incredibly excited for the ACT II Hackathon and have already fully registered my team.

I received my $100 AMD Developer Cloud credit approval, but I am completely blocked from spinning up a test GPU because DigitalOcean’s billing gate is rejecting Ethiopian Mastercards (it flags them as unsupported prepaid cards).

I want to be fully prepared for Track 1. Since I cannot bypass the DigitalOcean payment method requirement from my country, will the official hackathon compute access that drops on July 6th bypass this credit card requirement? Or is there an alternative way to provision a test GPU through the AMD AI Developer Program for international developers facing this DO billing block?
Thank you!

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I am writing to appeal an automated block on my AMD AI Academy account. My account was flagged and blocked by the system while I was executing the course materials provided in the “chatbot_vllm.ipynb” notebook lab. I was running the standard code cells provided in the curriculum to test the vLLM inference setup when the workspace disconnected and displayed a security violation block. I believe the automated system triggered a false positive due to the background server port initialization required by the vLLM framework for the lab exercise. Here are my account details:

- GitHub Username: dejistephen

Could you please review my workspace session and restore my access so I can continue with the AI Academy learning path? Thank you for your time and assistance.

Best regards,

Stephen Deji

edit: removed email due to privacy reason :slight_smile:

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Hello Ayllee, Thanks for you guidance, i did just that and redeemed my credits, but one week later it was taken off of my account and now when i visit my account i find 0$ and action needed? plus, when i tried working with the gpu when i had the credits it didn’t let me because i’m not from the US, so do i need a vpn or …? and i wanted to ask if each member of the team can have his own 100$ credits or is it supposed to be just a 100$ per team? thank you again.

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I registered for the AMD Developer Hackathon: ACT II and also applied for the AMD Developer Cloud credits. However, I haven’t received the credits yet
I am eager to start building my hackathon project, so I would appreciate any update on the status of my credit request.

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Hello i requested the credits a week ago but i haven’t received any updates yet, can you plase help me? thanks

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I see a msg from you didn’t form a team share me the details i will join to your team

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Hello @astel antonomy

I’m new to this hacakthon competition and i don’t have any idea what are the details should be shared to join in a group and i still didn’t received any reply from the cloud to abt my credits too so i don’t have a team and credits either. Can you help me solving these 2 issues.

Thanks & Regards,
Yahya

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Hello @Astel_Antony

I’m new to this hackathon competition and i don’t have any idea what are the details should be shared to join in a group and i still didn’t received any reply from the cloud team abt my free credits too so i don’t have a team and credits either. Can you help me solving these 2 issues.

Thanks & Regards,
Yahya

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I’ve forwarded your issue to our team, in case of further questions, feel free to send me a DM :slight_smile:

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hello @Ayllee_AMD
can you help me to join for a team, like what are the details you need from me to teammaking??

thank you,
Yahya

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Yeah i will do my best so you can contact in my work instagram account so i can contact you easly insta id @agent_viperop

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hello @Astel_Antony

i cannot message you unless you follow me back i started to follow you just now.

Thankyou,
Yahya

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Hello, did you sign up after 2nd July? In that case the hackathon compute access and credits will only be allocated from 7th July onward.