About the challenge

Put intelligence in people's pockets. The Sydney Mobile AI Hackathon (AI On Apple — Sydney) brings together Sydney's most ambitious developers, designers, founders and creators for one intense weekend of building AI-native apps for Apple platforms.

Over the weekend 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 want to ship something remarkable.

This is not a weekend of slide decks and hypothetical ideas. It's a hands-on build sprint focused on what becomes possible when intelligence runs directly on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro.

When: Friday 23 – Sunday 25 October 2026
Where: Level 3, 20 Martin Place, Sydney CBD, NSW (in person)

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

Tracks — every track ends with a working demo:

  • Enterprise — Solve a real business problem with AI on Apple platforms.
  • Community Impact — Build for social good and real human impact.

Sponsors: SCX — Australian-headquartered sovereign AI infrastructure, with Foundation Models support in SCXSwiftKit — and ElevenLabs for voice and conversational AI. Every attendee receives A$100 of SCX credit and US$22 of ElevenLabs credit to build with.

Schedule

  • Friday 23 October: 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm — Pre-event
  • Saturday 24 October: 10:00 am – 8:00 pm — Hacking time
  • Sunday 25 October: 10:00 am – 2:00 pm — Hacking time
  • Sunday 2:00 pm: Judging, closing ceremony & event wrap

Schedule is subject to change before the weekend.

Get started

You don't need to arrive with a team or a finished idea. We're looking for iOS, macOS, visionOS, tvOS, AI/ML and full-stack developers; product designers and creative technologists; founders and independent builders; first-time hackers ready to learn; and experienced engineers ready to push the technology further.

Bring your Mac, your curiosity and the willingness to build fast. Every person on a team needs their own ticket.

Attendance is application-based so we can create a strong, balanced room across engineering, product, design and AI. Apply on Luma: luma.com/apple-ai-hackathon.

Still unsure? Email [email protected].

The Sydney Mobile AI Hackathon is an independent event and is not endorsed by Apple Inc. Apple and related trademarks are the property of Apple Inc.

Requirements

What to Build

Any AI-powered app for Apple platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS or visionOS — built during the weekend in one of our tracks:

  • Enterprise — Solve a real business problem with AI (internal tools, productivity, unglamorous workflows).
  • Community Impact — Projects for social good and real human impact.

Put intelligence where it matters: on the device, close to the camera, voice, sensors and the person using it. Everything must be built during the weekend — no pre-baked projects.

What to Submit

Every track ends with a working demo. On Devpost, teams should submit:

  • A working demo of the app, built during the event
  • A short write-up describing the problem, the track you built for, and how the app uses on-device AI (Foundation Models, Core ML, Apple Intelligence or local models), SCX sovereign inference, and/or ElevenLabs voice AI
  • Screenshots or a short screen recording of the app in action
  • The platform(s) it runs on (iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS or visionOS)

Submissions close at 2:00 pm on Sunday 25 October, when teams present their live demos to the judges. You own everything you build — full stop.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

4 non-cash prizes
Best Enterprise Solution using AI on Apple
1 winner

2× Mac mini for the winning team. Winning team members also each receive A$425 SCX credit and 3 months of ElevenLabs Pro (US$297 value). Credits are not cash.

Best Community / Social Good Project using AI on Apple
1 winner

2× Mac mini for the winning team. Winning team members also each receive A$425 SCX credit and 3 months of ElevenLabs Pro (US$297 value). Credits are not cash.

Best Project Built with SCX
1 winner

Sponsor prize from SCX. A$1,290 SCX credit per team member for the best project built using SCX sovereign inference (e.g. via SCXSwiftKit with Foundation Models). Credit, not cash.

Best Project Built with ElevenLabs
1 winner

Sponsor prize from ElevenLabs. 3 months of the ElevenLabs Scale plan (US$897 value) per team member. Credit, not cash.

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

TBA

TBA

Judging Criteria

  • Innovation
    How original and ambitious is the idea? Does it show what becomes possible when intelligence runs directly on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch or Vision Pro — something nobody in the room has seen before?
  • Technical Craft
    How well is it built? Quality of the engineering and design, and how effectively it uses on-device AI (Foundation Models, Core ML, Apple Intelligence or local models), SCX sovereign inference and/or ElevenLabs voice AI.
  • Impact
    Does it solve a real problem? For Enterprise: a workflow a business would actually pay to fix. For Community Impact: a meaningful social or human need. For visionOS: a spatial experience that matters.
  • Live Demo
    Is the app working end-to-end, and how clearly and convincingly does the team demo it live on stage? A real, demoable product beats a slide deck.

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

Invite others to compete

Hackathon sponsors

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