Winners and highlights from GKE Hackathon

The GKE Turns 10 Hackathon was an electrifying showcase of developer ingenuity! Building on the excitement from our initial announcement, the hackathon challenged participants to build powerful AI agents that interact with microservice applications using the robustness of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and the intelligence of Google AI models like Gemini. 

The goal was to seamlessly integrate next-generation agentic AI capabilities, all orchestrated on GKE, to elevate existing applications to new heights. The hackathon attracted an incredible 4,773 registered participants from 133 countries, culminating in 133 innovative gallery projects. 

Now, let’s give a massive round of applause to our remarkable winners whose projects are a testament to the creativity, technical mastery, and deep understanding of GKE and AI at the heart of this challenge.

Grand prize winner: Amie Wei

The grand prize winner, Amie Wei, was invited to attend KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025, where she shared her experience and insights. Amie presented a lightning talk, joined an exclusive interview with Stephanie Wong at the House of Kube, and was featured in a broadcast on theCUBE, where she discussed the hackathon trends and her winning application. Read about Amie’s interview and the hackathon highlights here. 

She highlighted how Google credits and available resources made it easier to get hands-on experience with GKE and AI. 

“You miss 100% of the shots you do not take”, said Amie when asked what she wanted to tell any other first time hackathon participant or developer.