Inside the {Tech: Europe} AI Hackathon at Codesphere HQ

On June 14 and 15, 2025, our Karlsruhe headquarters came alive. More than 80 engineers filled the space with energy, ideas, and the unmistakable buzz of people building things that matter. The {Tech: Europe} AI Hackathon had kicked off, and the atmosphere was electric.

From the moment people arrived, teams jumped straight into it. Laptops were open, whiteboards filled up fast, and ideas started turning into prototypes. With powerful tools from Mistral AI and ElevenLabs at their fingertips, engineers got to work solving curated challenges and dreaming up original solutions. This wasn’t just about shipping code. It was about pushing boundaries.

But more than the tech, what stood out was the community. Organized with Creandum, {Tech: Europe}, and KIT Gründerschmiede, the hackathon reflected what makes this city special: passion, talent, and a shared drive to build something meaningful right here in the local tech scene. When {Tech: Europe} reached out to us to host this event, we were genuinely excited to open up our new office and provide a space that brings innovation and enterprises together. At Codesphere, we’re committed to supporting and growing the ecosystem in Karlsruhe and it was fantastic to see our space transformed into a vibrant hub of collaboration.

The event featured four tracks, each with its own flavour of challenge and creativity:

🤖 AI Robotic: Build AI-powered systems that perceive, decide, and act in the physical world using Sereact’s robotics stack—bringing code to life through embodied intelligence.

💾 AI Computing: Dive deep into compute infrastructure by training models, optimizing inference, and benchmarking hardware—pushing the limits of AI systems without relying on plug-and-play APIs.

🚀 AI Application: Create real-world AI products by integrating at least three partner technologies (like Mistral AI, ElevenLabs, and Weaviate) into cohesive, user-friendly applications.

⚡️ Efficient AI for the Software Lifecycle: Develop lightweight, locally executable developer tools that prioritize speed, control, and minimal dependencies, leveraging powerful hardware setups and self-hosted models.

That last track—Efficient AI for the Software Lifecycle—is especially close to our mission at Codesphere. We believe that building small, efficient tools with local compute isn’t just about speed or convenience, it’s about sovereignty. Not everyone has the means or desire to run massive infrastructure on-premise, but for sectors like banking, insurance, and healthcare that handle highly sensitive data, being able to run AI models securely and privately on hardware they control remains critical, even in an era dominated by the cloud.

That’s why we’re so passionate about enabling enterprises to deploy AI models on commodity hardware, locally, without depending on external APIs or services. Our focus on local compute and self-hosting options is all about giving teams the freedom to innovate securely and independently. Sharing that vision with the hackathon participants and seeing them tackle these challenges head-on, was one of the highlights of the weekend.

Each team approached these challenges differently, and the results were as diverse as they were impressive. We saw projects that tackled everything from robotics and language learning to medical diagnostics. In just two days, strangers became teammates and rough ideas became functioning systems.

As the event wrapped up, everyone gathered for demos. The AI Robotics team took first place with a system that let robots find and retrieve specific items while automatically identifying and removing obstacles. It was smart, practical, and built to solve a real operational problem. They tackled tough challenges like gathering data through teleoperation and blending vision with imitation learning.

What we saw that weekend was more than innovation. It was grit, collaboration, and a shared sense of purpose. Builders left with new connections and fresh ideas for the future.

For us at Codesphere, this event was also a way to show that Karlsruhe isn’t just a growing tech hub, it’s home to ambitious regional players ready to take on big infrastructure challenges. We care deeply about helping companies build tools that work for them, on their terms.

To all the participants, partners, and supporters: thank you. You helped create something special. Karlsruhe proved once again that it’s not just a tech hub, it’s a community. And for us at Codesphere, this is only the beginning.

We’re already excited for what comes next. Until then, stay curious, stay creative, and keep an eye on our blog for more stories from Europe’s growing tech ecosystem.

From all of us at Codesphere, thank you for being part of this journey.