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hack·february 11, 2026·16 min read

c0mpiled-2: The Adaptive City Post-Mortem

by sabba petri568 reads

Overview

c0mpiled-2 was our second international hackathon: 140+ builders in Abu Dhabi, tasked with building agentic systems that solve real, tangible problems for the UAE ecosystem. Government, real estate, logistics, tourism, daily life. We had two onsite tech partners: CrustData and Lingo.dev and five remote partners: Lyra, Trace, SF Tensor, Unbound and Uplift AI. This was our first time pulling in remote partners for the hackathon + judging.

Thanks again to those judges!

The demographic this time around was unlike anything we've seen before. High schoolers sat next to university students sat next to founders. Also, very strong female participation throughout, including an all-female Emirati team that placed second.

This was our second hackathon after c0mpiled-1 in San Francisco and second global hackathon after Tokyo. We learned a lot. Some things carried over from Tokyo. Some things were brand new.

Reflections

  • Good: We saw a lot of diversity and representation here (see metrics below)
  • Good: Early doors worked well, ~60 people arrived within 20 minutes, ready to network and build. We should’ve started sooner!
  • Good: Venue, food, and vibe were a hit, even with the Asian Le Mans race noise outside
  • Good: Judging was very smooth; the pod + narrowing system scaled well and remote judging worked just fine
  • Good: Mentor engagement was high; teams actively sought feedback from judges
  • Good: The mix of students and founders created strong cross-pollination
  • Bad: Lightning intros had to be rushed since we started building too late; need to start earlier
  • Bad: WiFi failed during submissions; uploads were bottlenecked
  • Bad: 1-minute demos were too short, 2 minutes is ideal, 3 minutes is too long
  • Bad: Submission flow (Loom + GitHub) was chaotic; need to rethink submission process
  • Bad: Late submission rules weren’t clearly enforced
  • Observation: Builders sought heavy idea validation.
  • Observation: Winners built visionary autonomous systems, not just dashboards

Interesting Data Points

144 builders. 14+ countries. 17 founders. 29% women. From MIT to MBZUAI, from YC to ISEF, huge concentrated gathering of early-stage technical talent

  • 144 participants, 64 submissions
  • 71% male / 29% female (101 M, 43 F) → ~2.35:1
  • 14+ countries represented including UAE, US, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Pakistan, Canada, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Germany, UK, India, Bangladesh, Georgia, Venezuela and more
  • 55 Engineers / Developers in the room
  • 43 AI/ML Practitioners
  • 17 Active Founders / CEOs
  • 45 Students
    • Khalifa University - 31
    • NYU Abu Dhabi - 45
    • 42 Abu Dhabi - 11
    • MBZUAI - 10
    • UAE University - 6
    • Plus representation from MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and Cambridge
  • Domain expertise spanning Edtech, FinTech, Aerospace/Defense, Healthcare, Climate, GovTech and Gaming

Prizes & Recognition

  • 1st Place ($5,000 + Office Hours with Jon Xu): Attention Is All You Need
    An agentic system tackling human fatigue in industrial workflows by orchestrating tasks based on real-time focus levels. A thoughtful blend of human biology and autonomous systems.
  • 2nd Place ($2,000 + Office Hours with Jon Xu): AquaAI
    An autonomous decision layer for urban water systems, designed to reduce overproduction, energy waste, and emissions — especially relevant for cities like Abu Dhabi.
  • 3rd Place ($1,000 + Office Hours with Jon Xu): Kanban Team
    A compliance-first workflow engine that simplifies fractional/tokenized real estate transactions in the UAE by replacing fragmented manual processes with a single auditable system.

Judges

  • CrustData (Fall ‘24) - Manmohit Grewal
  • Lingo.dev (Fall ‘24) - Max Prilutskiy / Veronica Prilutskaya
  • Lyra (Spring ‘25) - Courtne Marland
  • SF Tensor (Fall ‘25) - Luk Koska / Tom Koska
  • Trace (Summer ‘25) - Tim Cherkasov / Artur Romanov
  • Unbound (Summer ‘24) - Vignesh Subbiah
  • Uplift AI (Summer ‘25) - Hammad Malik

What's Next

c0mpiled-2 was our first Transpose step for the region, a work in progress. The talent density surprised us and the demand for more events for young entrepreneurs was loud and clear. We're actively exploring future hackathons in Abu Dhabi and across the UAE, potentially including high school students and partnering with local organizations that have already reached out.

If you participated, built something, or just showed up and stayed until 10pm, thank you! You're the reason this works.

Submissions

Adaptive City

Adey

AquaAI -- Autonomous City Water Operator

ATHAR

Attention is all you need

Aurdino Girls

B_Team

Bobthebot

CityKey

Cyberpunks

DriveCompanion Pro

Easy

EdgeMatch

Exit11

Farah

  • Description: An AI-powered wedding planning platform that centralizes the complex workflow of Emirati weddings (separate men's and women's events, multiple vendors, strict scheduling, privacy constraints) replacing scattered WhatsApp coordination with structured multilingual management.
  • Team: Amr Mohi Aldeen, Mohamad Dabbagh, Ahmad Saad
  • Tech Partners: Lingo.dev
  • GitHub: https://github.com/AmrMohiAldeen/Wedding-Planner.git

FlowState

Good Tidings

Green Corridor

GrowAI

GuardTheGate

Hayat

Homebase

Human Intelligence

kaldonia-labs

Kali

Kanban Team

MAF

Manara

Mansour Alakrbi

Medico

Mesh

Mnemo

movefast

ParkUAE

Placebo

Radarr

RealView Team

Reclaimer

Rift

Saadiyat Stopover

SignBridge

SOWTEE

StartUAE

Team Phoenix

ThePrecisionSquad

UrLeads

WIJHA AI

Yastime

Zayed AI

Photos







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