We just wrapped up our AI Agent Hackathon with IBM watsonx.ai, brought to you by IBM TechXchange, that ran from March 20 - 31. Teams of up to 5 people from around the world got hands-on with watsonx on IBM Cloud. By the end of this 11 day hack, teams submitted proof-of-concept projects demonstrating how AI-powered virtual agents using IBM watsonx.ai could address one of two challenge theme options:
We’re excited to announce the winning teams!
First place teams
First place for the “Improve business productivity” theme:
Team watsonXoverload
No matter the industry, when employees sit in back-to-back meetings that lack clear objectives, structured agendas, or proper follow-up actions, the resulting miscommunications, lack of engagement, missed tasks, and delayed decisions mean businesses lose productivity.
Team watsonXoverload’s “Meeting Ledger” solution hopes to address this, by providing an end-to-end approach to better, data-driven meeting management. It integrates with common calendars and collaboration tools such as Outlook and Google so users don’t have to switch between tools.
Before a meeting, a virtual agent can analyze things like meeting descriptions, past meeting transcripts, user-specific content, and uploaded instructions to generate a meeting invitation that includes a clear, focused agenda as well as briefing materials to help participants better prepare and get the most out of the meeting. During a meeting, the platform continues to assist attendees, using natural language understand to highlight and tag critical action items and decisions within real-time transcripts. An AI chat agent also gives attendees a way to mark actions or request clarification without interrupting the meeting discussion. After-meeting summaries can categorize and assign tasks, integrating with project management tools to make sure they get completed. The platform can even analyze meeting metrics like duration and participation levels to make recommendations for improving future meetings.
The solution uses IBM watsonx.ai to power intelligent AI agents that can address each phase of business meetings. It also uses the natural language processing and machine learning capabilities of watsonx.ai foundation models.
Watch their demo
First place for the “Clean water challenge, brought to you by Call for Code” theme:
Team Young & Hungry
Managing groundwater availability is critical everywhere, but especially in India where nearly 25% of global groundwater is used. Depletion of critical aquifers threatens states like Punjab, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh, where groundwater levels have plummeted below sustainable thresholds. This crisis endangers food security, rural livelihoods, and water sustainability for the whole nation.
The “Wise Drop” solution uses agentic AI to provide user-specific experiences, empowering everyone involved in managing groundwater with data and insights specific to their role. Farmers can interface simply through local-language Whatsapp and get personalized irrigation advice and crop recommendations to help them reduce water usage and improve yields. Local water managers can monitor aquifer health and contamination risks, and get reports with prioritized actions, allowing them to optimize resources more effectively. Policy-makers can run simulations on the impacts of different intervention methods and generate data-driven policy recommendations that consider agricultural productivity and aquifer preservation.
The solution leverages IBM watsonx.ai and Granite series models (Granite-3-2-8b-instruct, Granite-guardian-3-8b, Granite-13b-instruct-v2, Granite-20B-multilingual) within a multi-agent workflow that integrates historical data, real-time weather inputs, and contamination reports. Each specialized agent uses a specific Granite model best suited for its function.
Watch their demo
Each member of the second place teams will take home Apple Airpod Pros® and $300 USD IBM Cloud Credits. Congratulations to our second place winners:
-
“Improve business productivity” theme: Team Attention — This agentic AI system helps the project management office make more informed decisions and better manage infrastructure projects.
-
“Clean water challenge, brought to you by Call for Code” theme: Team Humanize — This home IoT water monitor uses AI to help everyday people manage and reduce their water consumption.
This could be you!
IBM TechXchange is hosting a series of worldwide, virtual hackathons throughout 2025! Each hackathon highlights a different watsonx tech focus like IBM Granite or agentic AI, and a new set of challenges to solve with that tech.
IBM is the founding partner of the Call for Code initiative, now in its 8th year, that calls on problem-solvers around the world to build tech to address social and humanitarian issues. This year Call for Code is integrated into our hackathon series. This means you’ll be able to chose their own adventure within each hackathon; Solve a business use case, or solve a humanitarian issue as part of a Call for Code-sponsored challenge.
First place teams in each hackathon can win:
-
$5,000 USD
-
$500 USD IBM Cloud credits, per team member
-
1 ticket per team member to IBM TechXchange Conference 2025 in Orlando (Tickets are subject to legal pre-approval, are non-transferable, and travel/lodging is not included)
Additionally, the team that wins first place for the Call for Code theme will be eligible to be judged in November for the 2025 Call for Code Global Challenge, where the top team will take home $50,000 USD.
Sign up
Registration for our next hackathon is open now!
Lean AI Solutions Hackathon, with IBM Granite Models
April 24 - May 5
Register
Learn more about the program and watch for more hackathons throughout the year:
IBM watsonx Hackathons, brought to you by IBM TechXchange and Call for Code
#community-stories1