The "AI Wave: Taiwan Generative AI Applications Hackathon," organized by DIGITIMES in collaboration with Taiwan's National Development Council, successfully concluded its second annual event in Taipei from April 26 to 27, 2025. Amazon Web Services (AWS) served as the AI technology provider for this competition, attracting 100 teams from across Taiwan comprising approximately 400 students, developers, and professionals who gathered to demonstrate the innovative potential of generative AI across various industries.
This year's event invited eight leading companies to design scenario-based challenges according to their industry needs: Cooler Master's "PC DIY Innovation," Chunghwa Telecom's "Resilient Future," Taishin Financial Holding's "Financial Innovation," Eastern Home Shopping & Leisure's "Next-Gen Retail," Chang Chun Group's "Smart Petrochemical Manufacturing," Advantech's "Intelligent Edge-Cloud Control," Walsin Lihwa's "Smart Manufacturing," and Gamania Group Vyin AI's "AI Idol." The organizers hoped that through industry challenges, technological support, and creative collaboration from various sectors, generative AI technology would continue to deepen its applications across diverse fields, driving Taiwan's industrial digital transformation toward new frontiers.
As global political and economic environments rapidly change, businesses increasingly demand AI industry innovation talent with practical AI experience, international vision, and bilingual capabilities to reduce costs and enhance competitiveness. The "AI Wave: Taiwan Generative AI Applications Hackathon," held for two consecutive years, serves as an important platform for promoting cross-domain collaboration and helping enterprises connect with external AI talent, thereby enabling businesses to establish competitive advantages in the international AI ecosystem through collaboration with innovative talents. This competition provides an opportunity for innovators and developers to showcase their talents, particularly for participants who can spark more creative ideas through on-site exchanges.
Colley Hwang, Chairman of DIGITIMES, noted that generative AI has become a crucial force driving industrial applications and everyday life transformations,
allowing businesses to reduce costs, enhance experiences, and boost revenue growth—essential drivers for industrial transformation. As a global technology industry hub, Taiwan could further develop a complete digital AI ecosystem from chips to comprehensive solutions if it successfully integrates AI talent with its excellent foundation as a Silicon Island. "We continue to host the 'Taiwan Generative AI Applications Hackathon' to cultivate creativity and promote cross-domain collaboration, helping young talents understand industry needs and serving as an important driver for continued industrial growth," said Hwang.
Robert Wang, Managing Director of AWS Taiwan and Hong Kong, pointed out that in today's digital economy, generative AI technology will become increasingly important, shaping the future and bringing more innovative possibilities with significant contributions to Taiwan's economic development. Wang further elaborated on the growth of the hackathon. Compared to last year, this year's "AI Wave: Taiwan Generative AI Applications Hackathon" saw a substantial increase in registrations, indicating that many innovators have begun applying technologies such as Amazon Nova multimodal models and Agentic AI to their development projects. "With 'Customer Obsession' as our core value, we leverage AWS's experience supporting Amazon's innovations across logistics, semiconductors, AI, robotics, drones, and low-orbit satellites to help Taiwan's industrial customers accelerate their innovation in key technological processes," said Wang. "80% of global unicorn startups are on AWS. We will continue to fully support developers in transforming creativity into minimum viable products and accelerating the implementation and market landing of innovative ideas, and we look forward to collaborating with more local Taiwan startups to co-create a brilliant digital future."
400 AWS Developers Compete in Intense 30-Hour Battle with 8 Teams Winning Jury Recognition
The "2025 AI Wave: Taiwan Generative AI Applications Hackathon" was divided into "Hacker" and "Idea Exchange" categories. Competing teams were required to use AWS cloud and generative AI services—such as Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that makes high-performing foundation models, Amazon Q Developer for generative AI software development assistance, and PartyRock for no-code generative AI application builder—to create applications meeting enterprise needs and then demonstrate their results to the judges. For both categories, company representatives served as mentors alongside AWS solutions architects, helping participants utilize AWS's various AI tools and cloud services combined with enterprise data for concept ideation and implementation. The evaluation criteria for both categories covered creativity, technical feasibility, business applicability, theme relevance, and completion level to ensure participants could fully demonstrate their technical prowess and creative potential.
In the "2025 AI Wave: Taiwan Generative AI Applications Hackathon," all 100 participating teams demonstrated abundant innovative thinking and strong technical capabilities after receiving professional training through enterprise data workshops and AWS generative AI workshops. Many teams noted that before participating, they were unfamiliar with generative AI technologies but successfully leveraged AI tools and data resources thanks to technical guidance from AWS experts and industry knowledge sharing from corporate mentors, ultimately transforming their creative ideas into viable solutions during the competition.
After a grueling 30-hour competition, this year's "Hacker" category produced seven winning teams. The "Cloud Ninjas" team from Chang Chun Group's "Smart Petrochemical Manufacturing" challenge secured victory by successfully transforming personnel expertise into voice-driven intelligent decision-making processes, creating a more natural and fluid human-machine collaboration experience. The "Otter Knocking Boat" team from Taishin Financial Holding's "Financial Innovation" challenge utilized banking transaction records and basic account information to propose an AI-driven financial fraud detection system. The "Alpha Three" team from Walsin Lihwa's "Smart Manufacturing" challenge presented precise data preprocessing and system architecture optimization strategies for international stainless steel industry standards, successfully improving knowledge base retrieval and response quality. The "Famous on the Board" team from Cooler Master's "PC DIY Innovation" challenge approached from user pain points, combining natural language analysis and image generation technology to propose an AI PC case design platform solution assisting designers.
The "Cloud Science Network Management" team from Eastern Home Shopping & Leisure's "Next-Gen Retail" challenge formulated personalized sales strategies based on customer data analysis needs and built an AI voice sales system achieving automated customer service and precise sales. The "AWS Hero Song" team from Advantech's "Intelligent Edge-Cloud Control" challenge utilized industrial AI camera - ICAM combined with generative AI services to create an innovative medical communication system, effectively improving patient safety in healthcare scenarios. The "Disheveled in the Wind" team from Gamania Group Vyin AI's "AI Idol" challenge combined intelligent interaction, voice dialogue, and emotional memory functions to create a smart idol product that truly accompanies fans.
The winning team in the "Idea Exchange" category was the "Revenge Seekers" from Chunghwa Telecom's "Resilient Future" challenge, who built an intelligent system helping people without medical backgrounds perform initial emergency aid procedures, using AI to improve disaster response efficiency.
The jury stated that each participating team demonstrated excellent capabilities and rich imagination, impressive in both technical depth and creative breadth. They expressed deep admiration for the participants' dedication and effort, hoping this experience would serve as nourishment for continued improvement and enable participants to create greater impact in their professional fields. Additionally, the organizers specially added an "Inclusive AI Award," with winning teams "Global Ambition Team" and "Zhong Liang Ju," hoping to attract more teams to participate in next year's competition.
This competition is expected to establish a solid foundation for Taiwan's generative AI field development, leading to a prominent position in global AI competition.
Article edited by Sherri Wang
