VITOR RODRIGUES@gimmethedrinks

The Problem: Startups miss out on billions in non-dilutive federal funding every year—not because they aren't eligible, but because the process is broken. The search is fragmented, pitch writing is time-consuming, and deadlines are unforgiving. Founders need an autonomous partner, not just a search bar. The Solution: Startup Funding Architect is a production-grade Agentic AI solution built on IBM watsonx Orchestrate. It replaces the manual grant application lifecycle with a seamless, conversational workflow that moves from discovery to execution in under 60 seconds. Technical Architecture: We bypassed simple prototyping to build a resilient, enterprise-ready architecture: The Brain: An IBM watsonx Orchestrate Agent configured with a ReAct persona to reason through complex, multi-step user intents. The Muscle: A custom Microservices Context Protocol (MCP) Server built with Python 3.11 and FastAPI. The Intelligence: Integrated Google Gemini 1.5 (via the modern Google GenAI SDK) to power the "Triple-Horizon" pitch generation framework. The Infrastructure: Fully containerized (Docker) for reliability.Key Features: Resilient Grant Hunting: A custom scraping engine that queries the Grants.gov API with a 5x Exponential Backoff Retry Policy, ensuring data capture even during government server instability. Triple-Horizon Pitch Architecture: The agent doesn't just write text; it adheres to a strict prompt framework (Acute Pain Point, Technical Deviation, Strategic Lock) to maximize scoring potential against federal criteria. Proactive Execution: The agent anticipates user needs, automatically locking submission deadlines in Google Calendar and drafting emails in Gmail via secure, ephemeral OAuth token handling. Why This Matters: We didn't just build a chatbot; we built a workflow automator. By combining the orchestration power of watsonx with the speed of a hardened microservice, Startup Funding Architect proves that AI agents can be trusted with critical business operations.

⏱️ Build the next generation of Autonomous Agents in the heart of Europe’s AI Revolution. 📅 May 13 – 20, 2026 May 13 – 19: Online Build Phase. May 19: Onsite Build Day. May 20: Demo Showcase & Awards Ceremony. 📍On-site Venue (May 19–20): Fiera Milano (Rho), Milan, Italy 🤝 Join solo or with a team. 🎟 FREE Milan AI Week conference ticket included for participants. 💰 $32,000+ prize pool 🧑‍💻 Apply now to turn your autonomous agent into a market-ready enterprise solution.

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 for the AMD AI Developer Program. 🤝 Go solo or team up — ship something real. 💰 $21,500+ total prize pool & 1 × AMD Radeon™ AI PRO R9700 GPU up for grabs. 📍 On-site Venue (May 9-10): MindsDB SF AI Collective 3154 17th St, San Francisco, California, USA 📍On-site participation is by invitation only. Travel and accommodation expenses will not be covered. 🧑‍💻 Developers, builders, and innovators - bring your boldest ideas and let’s turn them into real AI systems on AMD.

In this hybrid hackathon powered by Arc, developers will build the next generation of agentic commerce systems using Arc with USDC. Explore a world where AI agents and web services can pay for APIs, data, compute, and content in dynamic, usage-based ways, while Arc provides stablecoin-native settlement with predictable USDC fees and deterministic, sub-second finality. This hackathon is supported by Google & Google DeepMind, with a dedicated challenge and $40,000 in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) credits awarded for the best use of Gemini models and Google AI Studio. 📅 January 9 – 24, 2026 • Jan 9 – 23 (Online Phase) – Collaborate and build online with developers and AI innovators from around the world. All projects must be submitted by the end of the online phase on January 23rd. • Jan 23 (On‑site Build Day – San Francisco, CA) – Selected participants will be invited to an exclusive in‑person session to refine their projects and connect directly with mentors. • Jan 24 (On‑site Demos & Awards – San Francisco, CA) – Live pitching sessions to a panel of judges and ecosystem partners, followed by the official winner announcement. Get guidance from Arc and Circle experts through on-site support. 📍 On-site Venue (Jan 23–24): MindsDB SF AI Collective 3154 17th St, San Francisco, California, USA 🤝 Go solo or team up, it's your flow. 🏆Compete for $50,000 in USDC & GCP Credits. 📍 On-site participation is by invitation only. Travel and accommodation expenses will not be covered. 🧑🏻‍💻 Secure your spot now - sign up before the Kick-Off Stream!

⏱️ You’ve got 48 hours - create, build, and launch! 🌟 Get direct access to Qubic, mentors, and ecosystem support. 💰 Compete for your share of $44,550 in prizes across two tracks. 🤝 Work solo or team up to design the next wave of blockchain innovation. 🧑‍💻 Sign up and start building on one of the world’s fastest decentralized networks..