Dev Opportunity Radar #18: $50K AI Hackathon, SheBuilds, Verci Fellowship, and Stanford CS336

TL;DR

Welcome back to Dev Opportunity Radar.

This is a weekly series where I share opportunities, resources, communities, and interesting finds that I come across, with the goal of helping people discover things they might otherwise miss.

This week's edition features the Verci Fellowship, Nebius x NVIDIA Global AI Hackathon, and SheBuilds on Lovable, along with Stanford CS336: Language Modeling from Scratch, a course for understanding how language models are built from the ground up.

If you're new to the series, you can also browse previous editions, search past opportunities, and explore Community Finds, Reader Updates, and Resources Worth Checking Out on the Dev Opportunity Radar website. I've also written a short post about why I built it. You'll find links to both at the end of this article.

This week's 🌟 Community Finds section features two opportunities shared by Dhruv Jani (@dj29). Thank you, Dhruv, for sharing the Snapdragon® AI Lab Build & Present Challenge and the SerpApi India Hackathon 2026. I always enjoy seeing readers help others discover opportunities they might otherwise have missed, and I hope this section continues to grow.

If you've discovered something through the Radar, I'd love to hear about it. Whether you applied to an opportunity, attended an event, joined a community, completed a program, built something, or found a resource you hadn't seen before, I'd be happy to feature your experience in a future 💙 Reader Updates section (with your permission).

And if you've come across an opportunity, resource, community, program, event, or anything else you think deserves more attention, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature one of your 🌟 Community Finds in a future edition, I'll always make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

Table of Contents

• ⚡ Quick Scan
• 🔄 Still Open From Previous Editions

• 📍 This Week's Opportunities

  • 📌 Verci Fellowship
  • 📌 Nebius x NVIDIA Global AI Hackathon
  • 📌 SheBuilds on Lovable

• 📚 Resources Worth Checking Out

  • Stanford CS336: Language Modeling from Scratch

• 🌟 Community Finds

  • 📌 Snapdragon AI Lab Build & Present Challenge
  • 📌 SerpApi India Hackathon 2026

• 💙 Reader Updates

• 👋 Until Next Friday

• 🌐 Dev Opportunity Radar Website

⚡ Quick Scan

Opportunities

Resource Highlight

Community Finds

📝 A quick note: I spend a lot of time researching and verifying every opportunity before featuring it in Dev Opportunity Radar. However, deadlines, eligibility, program details, and application requirements can change after publication. Before applying, please take a few minutes to visit the official program page, review the latest information, and confirm that you're eligible.

🔄 Still Open From Previous Editions

Before we get into this week's opportunities, here are a few from the two most recent editions that are still accepting applications.

As the Radar has grown, there are now quite a few opportunities spread across the different editions. I used to keep all the still-open opportunities here, but I don't think repeating a long list every week makes the editions easier to read.

So I keep this section to the two most recent editions as a quick reminder of opportunities you may have missed. Older opportunities are still available on the Dev Opportunity Radar website, where you can browse the full collection and use the filters to find something specific.

I've already covered the opportunities below in detail, so I won't repeat everything here. If any of them catch your attention, you can go back to the original edition for the full overview, eligibility details, and application links.

📍 This Week's Opportunities

Here are a few opportunities I came across this week that I thought were worth sharing.

📌 Verci Fellowship

Who it's for: Young builders, students, recent graduates, and people building projects or communities.

What it's about: The Verci Fellowship is a one-semester program bringing together 20 people who are building startups, projects, and communities.

The fellowship focuses heavily on community and mentorship. Each fellow is matched with a mentor, joins a small weekly mastermind group, and gets access to office hours and workshops with founders, operators, and investors.

There is also a Catskills retreat in November where the cohort spends a weekend together, along with support for fellows who want to organize things in their own communities such as hackathons, dinners, or demo nights.

Another part I found interesting is the focus on building in public. The program includes workshops and accountability groups to help fellows share what they are working on and actually ship something during the semester.

The fellowship is open to people who are currently in college, on leave, dropped out, or recently graduated, with the program looking for people roughly under 24 who have a strong interest in technology, are creative and curious, and are already building things on campus or in their communities.

Applications are rolling, but the current application form says applications close on October 1, 2026 at midnight PST.

Format: Hybrid / Online + New York and LA opportunities

Cohort: 20 fellows

Program: October – December 2026

Application Deadline: October 1, 2026 at midnight PST

Eligibility: Currently in college, on leave, dropped out, or recently graduated; roughly under 24

What you get: Individual mentorship, weekly mastermind groups, workshops and office hours, Catskills retreat, community/event support, cohort Slack, building-in-public support, and optional opportunity matching

Application: Name and background + social profiles + semester schedule + work/portfolio + short answers + 1–2 minute personal video

🔗 Apply to the Verci Fellowship

📌 Nebius x NVIDIA Global AI Hackathon

Who it's for: AI builders, ML engineers, developers, founders, and anyone interested in building practical AI systems.

What it's about: The Nebius x NVIDIA Global AI Hackathon is a global online hackathon where participants build an AI project using NVIDIA open source models on Nebius Token Factory or Nebius AI Cloud.

There are four main tracks, so you can choose the type of project that fits what you want to build:

• Coding and Agentic Engineering: Build coding agents and developer tools.
• Best Apps and Agents: Build an application or agent designed to solve a real problem.
• Personal AI: Build a private, always-on AI assistant with memory, skills, and access to your chosen tools and information.
• Physical AI: Build robotics, IoT, or other systems that can sense and act in the physical world.

The main requirement is that your submission runs on Nebius Token Factory or Nebius AI Cloud and uses at least one NVIDIA open source model.

I wanted to include this one because there is quite a bit of room in what you can build. You can work on an AI agent, developer tool, personal assistant, application, robotics project, or something else that fits one of the tracks.

There are also Builders & Brews events in different cities where participants can join technical onboarding, workshops, team formation, build sessions, and get feedback while working on their projects.

For the submission, you'll need a working project, public code repository, project description, working demo or test build, and a public demo video of three minutes or less. Your repository also needs an open source license and setup instructions.

There is $50,000+ in prizes, including a $20,000 grand prize, $10,000 for second place, $6,000 for third place, track prizes, city awards, and additional prizes.

Format: Online | Global

Deadline: October 30, 2026 at 10:30 PM IST

Tracks: Coding & Agentic Engineering | Best Apps & Agents | Personal AI | Physical AI

Requirement: Use Nebius Token Factory or Nebius AI Cloud + at least one NVIDIA open source model

Submission: Working project + public repository + demo + ≤3-minute demo video

Prize Pool: $50,000+ in prizes

🔗 Join the Hackathon

📌 SheBuilds on Lovable

Who it's for: Women 18+ who have an idea they want to turn into a working product, including students, first-time makers, founders, and experienced developers.

What it's about: SheBuilds on Lovable is a global community of women building with AI through virtual build events, webinars, and community spaces.

Season 04 is a 72-hour virtual build event where participants use Lovable to turn an idea into a working product alongside mentors, community champions, and a few hundred other builders.

You don't need to know how to code to apply. You can come with an idea, sketches, research, or a plan, and the actual building starts when the event kicks off.

You can participate solo or with one co-builder. Around 400 participants are expected to be selected for this season.

There are also live prep sessions from October 6–14 covering things like figuring out what to build, making your product stand out, and getting it in front of people. Accepted participants also get Lovable credits to use during the build.

The build starts on October 15 and submissions close on October 17. The organizers will announce the prizes at kickoff, so the prize details for Season 04 have not been announced yet.

Format: Online | 72-hour build event

Build Dates: October 15–17, 2026

Applications Close: September 27, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT

Decisions: October 5, 2026

Eligibility: Women 18+ with an idea they want to build

Team Size: Solo or 1 co-builder

Cost: Free | Coding Required: No

Expected Cohort: Around 400 participants

Prep Sessions: October 6–14

Prizes: To be announced at kickoff

🔗 Apply for Season 04

📚 Resources Worth Checking Out

Not every useful find comes with an application deadline.

Here's one resource worth checking out this week.

Stanford CS336: Language Modeling from Scratch

If you want to go beyond using LLMs and actually understand how language models are built, Stanford's CS336: Language Modeling from Scratch is a really interesting resource to explore.

The course walks through the process of building language models from the ground up, including data collection and cleaning, tokenization, Transformer architecture, training, GPU optimization, scaling, evaluation, inference, alignment, and reasoning.

What makes this course different is how implementation-heavy it is. The assignments have students actually build components of a Transformer language model, train a small language model, optimize attention with Triton, work with distributed training, process pretraining data, and apply post-training methods such as supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning.

The course provides lecture recordings, assignments, lecture materials, and code, so you can follow along even if you're not enrolled at Stanford.

One important thing to know before jumping in: this is an advanced course. The course expects proficiency in Python, experience with deep learning and systems optimization, familiarity with PyTorch, and a foundation in calculus, linear algebra, probability, statistics, and machine learning.

You will also be writing a lot of code, so this is much more suitable if you already have a solid technical foundation and want to understand the engineering behind language models.

Format: Self-paced online resource

Focus: Language models, Transformers, training, systems optimization, scaling, data, evaluation, alignment, and reasoning

Level: Advanced

Prerequisites: Python + PyTorch/deep learning + systems optimization + calculus + linear algebra + probability/statistics + machine learning

Includes: Lectures + recordings + assignments + code + course materials

🔗 Explore the CS336 Course Website

🎥 Watch the Lecture Recordings

🌟 Community Finds

One of my favorite things about this series has been seeing people share opportunities, communities, and resources that others might not have discovered otherwise.

This week, Dhruv Jani (@dj29) sent me two opportunities that I thought were worth including:

📌 Snapdragon AI Lab Build & Present Challenge

Shared by Dhruv Jani

The Snapdragon® AI Lab Build & Present Challenge by Qualcomm is an individual online challenge for participants in India to build or propose an AI solution designed, developed, or optimized for Snapdragon-powered HP PCs.

You can submit a new project or significantly modify an existing project by adding AI models from Qualcomm AI Hub or other open-source platforms.

The challenge is open to Indian residents aged 18+ who own a Snapdragon-powered laptop.

Format: Online | Individual

Deadline: September 30, 2026 at 11:59 PM IST

Eligibility: India residents, 18+

Requirement: Snapdragon-powered laptop

Rewards: HP laptops, Qualcomm internship opportunity for the first award subject to eligibility, executive mentorship, and showcase opportunities

🔗 Learn More & Apply

📌 SerpApi India Hackathon 2026

Shared by Dhruv Jani

The SerpApi India Hackathon 2026 is an online and asynchronous hackathon where participants can build an app, AI agent, or open-source integration using live search data from SerpApi.

You can participate solo or in a team of up to five, use any programming language or framework, and work from anywhere in India. Existing projects are also allowed if the submitted version makes meaningful use of SerpApi.

There are six project tracks, and AI-assisted development is allowed.

The total prize value is ₹3 lakh+, including cash awards, SerpApi credits, track awards, community awards, and credits for every valid submission.

Format: Online & asynchronous

Deadline: October 10, 2026 at 11:59 PM IST

Eligibility: India residents, 18+

Team Size: 1–5 members

Requirement: Meaningful use of SerpApi search data

Prize Value: ₹3 lakh+

Submission: Public GitHub repository + project description + demo video under 3 minutes

🔗 Submit Your Project

Thank you to Dhruv Jani (@dj29) for thinking of the Radar and sharing this one with the community. It really means a lot 💙

I'd love for this section to keep growing.

If you've come across an opportunity, fellowship, grant, hackathon, conference, community, resource, or anything else you think more people should know about, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature it in a future edition, I'll always make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

One small request: If you're sharing an opportunity, please avoid posting raw URLs directly in the comments. DEV sometimes filters them before I get a chance to see them.

A short description alongside the link makes it much easier for me to review and potentially feature it in a future edition.

💙 Reader Updates

I'm looking forward to this section gradually growing over time, and I'd still love to hear from you.

One of my favorite parts of writing Dev Opportunity Radar has been hearing from people who discovered something they otherwise might have missed.

If you discovered an opportunity through the radar, applied to something, joined a community, attended an event, or simply found a resource you hadn't seen before, I'd genuinely love to hear about it.

You don't need to have been accepted or have a big success story to share. Sometimes simply discovering the right opportunity at the right time is already a win.

If you'd like to share an update, feel free to leave a comment on this edition. With your permission, I may feature it in a future 💙 Reader Updates section and tag you so other readers can celebrate your journey too.

I hope this section gradually becomes a place where we can celebrate those stories together, one update at a time.

👋 Until Next Friday

Before I go, I just want to say thank you.

Every week, I spend time searching for opportunities, resources, and communities that I think deserve a little more attention. But one of my favorite parts of this series isn't the research. It's seeing what happens after an edition is published.

Seeing someone discover an opportunity, apply to a program, share a resource, suggest a Community Find, or come back to tell us what they learned reminds me why I started Dev Opportunity Radar in the first place.

The goal has always been simple:

Help people discover opportunities they otherwise might have missed.

Thanks to all of you, it feels like we're doing exactly that.

Whether you've been reading since the very first edition or this is your first time here, thank you for being part of the journey. Every comment, suggestion, and shared opportunity helps make this series better than I could build on my own.

If you ever come across an opportunity, resource, event, community, or anything else you think deserves more attention, I'd love for you to share it in the comments. And if Dev Opportunity Radar helped you discover something exciting, I'd love to hear that too.

Thank you for reading, for sharing, and for helping make this our radar, not just mine.

I'll be back next Friday with more opportunities, resources, and Community Finds.

Until then, take care, and I hope you discover something amazing this week 💙

🌐 Dev Opportunity Radar Website

If this is your first time discovering the series, you can explore every edition, browse opportunities by category, discover Community Finds, and catch up on Reader Updates on the Dev Opportunity Radar website.

👉 Website

I also wrote a short post about why I built the website and the journey behind it.

👉 Website Launch Post