Prizes & opportunities
What winning is worth
A ₹50,000 cash pool at the Grand Finale, a real conversation with the Sydon.AI engineering team, industry recognition, and a network of five hundred builders. Here is exactly what is on the table, and what is not.
- ₹50,000 Total cash prize pool Awarded at the Grand Finale on 10 October 2026.
- 100 Round 3 finalists The top individual builders from Round 2.
- 20 Pods of five One specialist per challenge domain.
- Free Cost to enter No entry fee, at any round.
The cash
₹50,000, awarded on the night
One pool, presented at the Grand Finale on 10 October 2026 in front of the judging panel.
₹50,000
Total cash prize pool
Grand Finale · 10 October 2026
- How it is split
- The split between winning pods and individuals is announced with the results. We are not publishing a breakdown in advance: the panel scores both the system a pod ships and the individual contribution inside it, and the award reflects what the judging actually finds.
- Who can win
- Every participant who reaches the Grand Finale is in contention. Employees of Sydon and CodeQuesters, members of the judging panel, and their immediate families are not eligible for prizes.
- How it is paid
- By bank transfer after the Finale, once we have the identity and payment details we need from each winner. Prizes are personal to the winner, are not transferable, and cannot be exchanged for an alternative.
- Tax
- Any tax, duty or reporting obligation arising from a prize is the winner’s responsibility, and we may withhold amounts where the law requires it. If you are unsure what applies to you, take your own advice before the Finale.
Beyond the cash
The part that outlasts the night
Most people who finish CUBE do not finish for the money. These are the outcomes that keep working after 10 October.
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Career
A conversation with Sydon.AI
Your work is read by practising engineers at every round, not skimmed at the end. Exceptional participants continue the conversation with the Sydon.AI engineering team after the programme.
That conversation is an outcome of demonstrated ability across the whole programme. It is not a guarantee of an interview, an offer or employment, it is never decided by the final demo alone, and we are not advertising a number of roles or a specific position. What we can commit to is that strong work gets read by the people who would actually work with you.
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Exposure
Industry visibility and recognition
Every submission is reviewed by engineers who build production systems for a living, and the defence is a live technical conversation with them rather than a pitch to a panel of spectators.
Finalists are recognised publicly by Sydon.AI and CodeQuesters. After the Grand Finale you are free to publish your own submission, so the work becomes something you can point at: a repository, an architecture you can explain, and a defence you have already survived.
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Community
A network that outlasts the event
Around five hundred selected builders, one hundred finalists, twenty pods of five. Round 3 puts you in a pod with four specialists you did not choose, working on real cross-agent dependencies, which is how professional engineering actually feels.
The people you meet include the engineers who ship intelligent commerce for a living. That network does not close when the Finale ends.
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Evidence
A record of what you can actually do
CUBE is scored on evidence at every stage: applications on your repositories and commits, Round 2 on working code merged into the starter repo, the Finale on a system that runs live and an individual who can defend it.
What you leave with is a defensible record rather than a participation badge: the “Earn” letter of the CUBE, in the programme’s own terms.
Whether or not you win
Six things every finisher takes away
The prize pool goes to a few people. This part does not.
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AI agent engineering
Reasoning loops, tool use, grounding and evaluation: the parts that decide whether an agent is useful or merely fluent.
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Modern software engineering
Version control, code review, testing, and working habits that hold up outside a hackathon weekend.
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System integration
How an independent capability becomes a dependable part of a larger product you do not fully control.
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Collaboration under dependency
Five specialists, one system, real cross-agent dependencies, and the negotiation that comes with them.
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Production thinking
Failure modes, edge cases, security and observable behaviour under real conditions.
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Technical communication
Explaining architecture, decisions and trade-offs to people who will challenge them.
Certification
You will be certified as
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CUBE Participant
Entry-level verified credential for shortlisted candidates.
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CUBE Builder
Functional prototype submission passing automated CI/CD checks.
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CUBE Finalist
Selected among 100 finalists from 1,000+ applicants.
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CUBE Systems Engineer
Built and integrated multi-agent AI systems through a production-oriented engineering workflow.
How it is decided
Nothing here is won on a slide
Four points where the panel forms a view. Every one of them is about work that runs.
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01Apply by 16 September
Round 1: Selection
Applications are read for evidence: your repositories, your commits, projects you can explain end to end. Roughly 500 selected from around 1,000.
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0225–26 September
Round 2: Build
One participant, one agent, one domain, inside a starter repository that already runs. Submissions close 27 September: working code, merged. Assessed within each domain, so every pod gets one specialist per challenge.
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037–9 October
Round 3: Integrate
The 100 finalists become 20 pods of five. Every agent must consume something another agent produces. The pod ships end-to-end workflows no single agent could complete alone.
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0410 October
Grand Finale: Defend
The system runs in front of the judges, and then you defend it: architecture, decisions, failures, trade-offs, performance, and exactly what you contributed. Judges score the system and the individual. Prizes are awarded here.
The rounds in full: Explore CUBE.
Straight answers
The questions people actually ask
- How is the ₹50,000 split?
- Announced with the results at the Grand Finale. We are not publishing a breakdown in advance, because the split follows what the judging finds rather than a table fixed before anyone has built anything.
- Is there a guaranteed job or internship?
- No. Exceptional participants continue the conversation with the Sydon.AI engineering team, and that is genuinely the whole of what we are promising. We are not advertising a number of roles, a title, a stipend or a start date, and nothing in the programme creates an employment relationship.
- Do I have to win to be considered for that conversation?
- No. It is an outcome of demonstrated ability across the whole programme (application, build, integration and defence), not of finishing first on the night.
- Does it cost anything to enter?
- Nothing. CUBE is free at every round. No purchase of any kind is required or will improve your chances.
- Who owns what I build?
- You do. You keep ownership of your code and materials. We take a licence to run, judge and show the work while covering the programme; we do not take your IP and we do not sell it. The detail is in the Terms of Use.
- Can I publish my submission afterwards?
- Yes, after the Grand Finale on 10 October 2026, provided you remove anything of ours that is still confidential and any third-party material you are not licensed to publish.
- Can I use AI coding tools and still win?
- Yes. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Cursor and equivalents are permitted and expected. You remain responsible for understanding, testing, validating, explaining and defending everything you submit, and the defence is where that shows.
- Do individual contributors get recognised inside a pod?
- Yes. The Finale scores the system and the individual separately, and you are asked directly what you contributed. Team output does not hide individual work in either direction.
The fine print, in one place
- Free to enter. You must be at least 16 to register; under 18 needs the consent of a parent or legal guardian.
- Employees of Sydon and CodeQuesters, members of the judging panel, and their immediate families are not eligible for prizes.
- Judges’ decisions are final. We may adjust criteria or weightings if a round has to change, and we will tell participants if we do.
- If a winner cannot be contacted within 30 days, does not provide the details we need, or is found to have breached the Terms, we may withdraw the prize and award it to another participant.
- Dates, formats, venues and prizes may change where we reasonably need them to. Material changes are published here and emailed to registered participants.
The operating system for modern commerce.