Nvidia has launched a global virtual hackathon aimed at accelerating development in robotics and physical AI, offering a top cash prize of $5,000 along with high-performance computing hardware.
The event, called the Cosmos Cookoff, invites developers, researchers, and system builders to create applications using Nvidia’s Cosmos family of world foundation models – AI systems designed to help machines perceive, reason about, and act within physical environments.
Registration opened on January 29 and closes February 19, with final project submissions due February 26. Winners are expected to be announced during the week of March 16.
Focus on robotics and autonomous systems
According to Nvidia, the challenge is intended for teams working across robotics, autonomous vehicles, and video analytics, encouraging participants to prototype workflows and applications that leverage the company’s physical AI models.
Projects will be judged on criteria including technical implementation, design, potential impact, and overall quality of ideas.
Judging will be conducted by experts from Datature, Hugging Face, Nebius, Nexar, and Nvidia.
Prize structure and hardware incentives
The competition offers multiple awards:
- First place: $3,000 and an Nvidia DGX Spark system
- Second place: $2,000 and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 GPU
- Third place: $500 in brev credits
Combined, the cash prizes total $5,000.
Participants will also gain access to tutorials, partner talks, live question-and-answer sessions, and technical guidance from Nvidia specialists.
Built around Cosmos AI models
The hackathon coincides with Nvidia’s continued expansion of its Cosmos platform, including Cosmos Policy, a robot control framework derived from the company’s Cosmos Predict world foundation model.
The policy is designed to map visual observations to robotic actions, enabling machines to plan tasks and predict future states within dynamic environments.
Nvidia says the model can function either as a direct control policy that generates actions in real time or as a planning system that evaluates multiple potential actions before execution.
Growing emphasis on physical AI
The Cookoff reflects increasing industry focus on so-called physical AI – systems capable of interacting with the real world rather than purely digital environments.
Nvidia is positioning Cosmos as a platform for developing such capabilities, supporting use cases that range from robotic manipulation to transportation and intelligent video analysis.
By hosting the hackathon, the company appears to be encouraging broader experimentation with its models while building a developer ecosystem around its robotics and autonomy technologies.
