FirstWave Innovator HackNight: San Diego’s AI Hackathon of 2025

Startup San Diego, in partnership with Neo4j and other leading tech organizations, is set to launch the FirstWave Innovator HackNight, the first AI-focused hackathon of 2025. The event aims to foster collaboration among developers, entrepreneurs, and startups to create AI-driven solutions for real-world business challenges.

Empowering Innovation Through AI

The hackathon will bring together:

• Five innovative startups

• Over 100 talented developers

• A suite of cutting-edge AI tools from industry leaders, including Neo4j, Intuit, iPop.ai, Replit, Unstructured.io, Diffbot, Perplexity, and Google

"We're not just building—we're elevating San Diego's tech landscape," said Cheryl K. Goodman, co-founder of AskTuring.ai, Vice Chair of Startup San Diego, and host, Mind the Machine™: “It's a place for folks to build and the community to be inspired and watch it come together for the future of tech in our city.”

Event Details

📅 Date: February 19, 2025

⏰ Time: 3:30 PM – 9:00 PM

📍 Location: Intuit’s San Diego Headquarters – 7535 Torrey Santa Fe Rd.

🔗 Registration: Sign up here

Who Should Attend?

This HackNight invites developers, entrepreneurs, and tech enthusiasts to collaborate and code for good, leveraging top AI technologies from from Neo4j, iPop.ai, Repl.it, Unstructured.io, Intuit, QuickBooks, Diffbot, Google, and Perplexity. Participants will work on solutions that address pressing business challenges and create real-world impact.

Hackathon Highlights

• Teams will build prototypes and MVPs (minimum viable products) for real-world startup challenges

• Four selected businesses—ASL Flurry, Gravity AI, HVAKR, and Rutabaga—will present challenges to be solved

• One startup idea, Ripl Life, will also be explored

• Participants will receive expert mentorship and guidance throughout the event

The event will conclude with a showcase of solutions, judged by startup founders and industry leaders

Key Event Partners & Their Contributions

Neo4j – The industry leader in graph database and analytics technology, Neo4j helps organizations uncover hidden relationships and patterns in large datasets. Their cutting-edge platform enables businesses to make data-driven decisions, optimize AI applications, and build highly scalable solutions.

Inuit Quickbooks – A global financial technology platform, QuickBooks simplifies business finance management, helping startups track finances, manage cash flow, and grow with confidence.

EyePop.ai – Specializing in AI-powered vision models, EyePop.ai makes it easy for businesses to analyze, interpret, and leverage visual data, opening new opportunities in automation and AI-driven insights.

Replit – A cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE) that enables developers to write, test, and deploy applications quickly. Replit provides a collaborative coding space that accelerates development from idea to launch.

Unstructured’s – A platform that bridges human-generated content with AI foundation models, allowing businesses to extract meaningful insights from unstructured data for automation and intelligent decision-making.

Diffbot - On a mission to synthesize human knowledge, Diffbot is developing the first autonomous knowledge graph, capable of understanding and organizing vast amounts of information. Their technology is essential for AI research, data analysis, and automated content extraction.

Top teams will win:

• Free coworking space at Ansir Coworking (up to 3 months, valued at $1,500). 1st Place = 3 months. 2nd Place = 2 months, 3rd Place = 1 month.

• 6-month access to dstl.ai’s Visual Knowledge Assistant, an all-in-one visual research and writing tool for professionals and students, to gather and distill the right information, organize it efficiently, and seamlessly create documents, study guides and slideshows integrated with your notes.

• Perplexity Pro membership for 6 months (valued at $120), giving access to their newly launched Deep Research tool for expert-level analysis.

  The company believes everyone deserves powerful research tools which is why they are sharing their powerful resources with FindGood.tech and Startup San Diego’s HackNight.

• Google - Build with Google AI, AI-powered tools and frameworks to accelerate machine learning and software development, allowing developers to build powerful AI applications.

• Startup San Diego Annual Membership (worth $1,500) for no-cost access to all StartupSD events, plus $300 gift cards

• Additional giveaways announced daily on LinkedIn. Follow StartupSan Diego on Linkedin for updates.

Building the Future of AI in San Diego

Startup San Diego, a volunteer-led nonprofit, is committed to fostering a thriving startup ecosystem. Through events like San Diego Startup Week, mentorship programs, resources, networking opportunities, and strategic partnerships with AskTuring.ai, Ansir Coworking, dstl.ai, SDSU Lavin Center, and TiE San Diego and others, the organization provides invaluable resources for emerging entrepreneurs.

Looking ahead, San Diego Startup Week 2025 will take place from October 6-10, 2025, bringing together top innovators, investors, and thought leaders in technology. For more details, visit Startup San Diego.

What This Means

The FirstWave Innovator HackNight isn’t just another hackathon—it’s an opportunity to catalyze innovation, empower developers, and elevate San Diego’s AI ecosystem. By bringing together top AI tools, brilliant minds, and real-world business challenges, this event is shaping the future of AI-driven problem-solving.

Editor’s Note: This article was created by Alicia Shapiro, CMO of AiNews.com, with writing, image, and idea-generation support from ChatGPT, an AI assistant. However, the final perspective and editorial choices are solely Alicia Shapiro’s. Special thanks to ChatGPT for assistance with research and editorial support in crafting this article.