This weekend, Denver becomes a bridge to something much bigger. The LeRobot Worldwide Hackathon - AI Robotics Global Challenge connects the Colorado capital with over 100 cities worldwide, all of them building robots, training AI, and pushing the boundaries of what's possible when communities collaborate on cutting-edge technology.
The event is being organized by Hugging Face, the New York City-based AI company whose open-source software underpins many of the natural language tools used today. Hugging Face has quickly become a central player in the global AI ecosystem, but this isn't your typical corporate event. Instead, it promises to be an example of gritty innovation, featuring people in community spaces, working over pizza to figure things out together.
Tell Your Friends You’re Busy Building Robots
Teams gathering at VentureX Denver North (located at 2590 Welton Street) will spend two days physically assembling robots from affordable hardware, programming them to perform tasks, and training AI models, all before Sunday's 6:00 pm deadline.
What makes LeRobot remarkable is how it brings together so many different disciplines. All components of this project – including 3D printable hardware designs, software libraries, datasets, training frameworks, and AI models – are completely open source.
Additionally, the robots being built this weekend won’t be just prototypes; they will contribute to an active research ecosystem where community data directly advances the entire field.
It's real work happening at the intersection of hardware, software, and AI, with participants from CU Boulder, Google DeepMind, AI Tinkerers, Hackerbot Industries, the Rocky Mountain AI Interest Group (RMAIIG), and others from Colorado's tech community.
No experience? No problem!
Denver event coordinator and Brain Wave Collective founder Daniel Ritchie is quick to say that even though participants will get the most out of it if they have some background in coding, hardware, or machine learning, curious newcomers are encouraged jump in.
In fact, as LeRobot says on the global registration page, “Open to all - No experience? No problem. Just bring your ideas – robots will follow!” This registration page is accessible from the official information page here.
Ritchie indicates that there will be opportunities for everyone to have hands-on participation, including recording training sessions and contributing to solutions that could have real-world use cases.
Note that the teams won’t be building just for the thrill of it. The ultimate goal is to achieve commercially viable solutions, encouraged by nearly $20,000 in prizes. Additionally – and exclusively for Denver participants – the local top prize will be high-value consulting from award-winning product design firm Ingenuity Design Group, based in Golden.
Saturday kicks off at 9:00 am with team formation and workshops, fueled by coffee, donuts, and pizza. Registration is open through the Brain Wave Collective's Meetup page. There's even talk that the Denver group will be specially featured on the global livestream connecting all 100 or so participating cities.
Don't just read about innovation: Roll up your sleeves and help build the future this weekend.
https://www.meetup.com/brain-wave-collective/events/307845156/
