24-Hour AI Building Marathon Unites 684 Developers with Billion-Dollar Tech Companies

What happens when you put 684 developers, designers, and founders in one building for 24 straight hours with unlimited access to cutting-edge AI tools? Malaysia’s largest AI hackathon just proved it creates magic.

The Cursor x Anthropic Hackathon Malaysia transformed Monash University into a non-stop AI development lab where participants built, shipped, and demoed 140 projects in a single weekend. The event’s unique 24-hour format created an intensity that traditional conferences can’t match – teams forming at breakfast, coding through the night, and presenting polished applications by Sunday afternoon.

Where Multi-Billion Dollar AI Meets Grassroots Innovation

The hackathon attracted backing from AI industry titans including title sponsors Cursor and Anthropic, alongside AWS, Vercel, Groq, ElevenLabs, and over 20 other technology companies. This wasn’t just sponsorship – it was direct collaboration. Participants gained hands-on access to enterprise-grade AI development platforms, with Cursor providing up to $5,000 in development credits and Anthropic offering $1,000 in Claude API access to winning teams.

“When companies like Cursor and Anthropic put their tools directly in builders’ hands, you see what’s actually possible with AI,” said Faw, event organizer. “These aren’t demos or tutorials – participants are building real applications that solve real problems.”

The diversity of sponsor tracks reflected the breadth of AI application development: voice AI with ElevenLabs, database solutions with TiDB, design tools with Mobbin, and even bug detection with CodeRabbit. Network School offered memberships worth $1,500 per month to winning teams, while 500 Global provided direct access to their AI residency program.

Community-Driven Team Formation Creates Unexpected Collaborations

One of the event’s most distinctive features was its organic team formation process. With 24% of participants arriving without predetermined teams, the hackathon operated as a massive professional matchmaking system. Students connected with experienced developers, designers paired with founders, and technical specialists found business-minded collaborators.

The result? Teams that combined complementary skills from day one. The participant mix included 38% students, 14% developers, and 16% founders – creating natural conditions for both technical execution and commercial viability. Nearly half of all project submissions targeted the venture track, indicating serious business intent rather than prototype experimentation.

AI Applications Built for Real-World Impact

Projects ranged from voice AI applications and enterprise database solutions to digital banking platforms and creative tools. The 28% of teams tackling digital banking reflected Malaysia’s position as a regional fintech hub, while the diversity of other applications showcased AI’s expanding commercial possibilities.

Live workshops throughout the event taught participants new AI development workflows and techniques, creating a continuous learning environment alongside the competition. Over 70 volunteers supported participants, maintaining the collaborative atmosphere that distinguishes community-organized events from corporate competitions.

Part of Southeast Asia’s Broader Builder Movement

The hackathon represented the culmination of AISEA’s two-week builder festival across five Southeast Asian countries, positioning the region as a unified AI development hub rather than individual national scenes. This community-first approach attracted participants from across the region, creating cross-border professional networks alongside the competition results.

“This hackathon shattered a lot of assumptions about Malaysian tech talent. The quality that came out was extremely high, in some cases better than anything we’ve seen in the country. Two brothers who’d never even joined a hackathon before won the whole thing. That tells you what’s happening here,” shared Joseph Chin, founder and lead of AI Tinkerers Kuala Lumpur (AITKL), a community partner to the hackathon, and one of the event’s judges.

He added, “An event of this scale — close to 2,000 signups — is a huge win for the scene, the country, and even the region. It might look like it appeared out of nowhere, but a few of us know it’s really the result of a couple of years building quietly alongside a passionate community, and those quiet efforts slowly compounding. It’s just an early glimpse of what Malaysia’s ecosystem is capable of, and trust me, this is just the beginning.”