Build with Serverless AI. Share with the community. Win.

The Nebius Serverless AI Builders Challenge is a community competition for ML engineers, applied researchers, and data scientists. Build a reproducible AI or ML project using Nebius Serverless AI Jobs, Serverless AI Endpoints, or both. Publish your code, explain your approach in a technical blog post, and help other practitioners learn from your work.

Whether you are running batch inference, building an evaluation pipeline, deploying an LLM endpoint, creating a RAG application, or automating an agentic workflow — we want to see practical examples that others can run, adapt, and learn from.

The Nebius Serverless AI Builders Challenge is in partnership with Nebius Academy — the education and research hub of Nebius, connecting real engineering work with professional learning and applied AI research.

Why participate?

• Win up to $2,000 in Nebius credits, plus badges, swag, and a featured spotlight on the Nebius blog and documentation
• Every valid submission earns $100 in Nebius credits
• Get hands-on experience with Nebius Serverless AI infrastructure
• Publish a technical piece that showcases your work to the broader ML community
• Earn a spot in the Nebius Awesome Serverless Projects library

What to build

Anything that uses Nebius Serverless AI Jobs or Nebius Serverless AI Endpoints to solve a real problem. Your project should be reproducible by another practitioner following your README.

We welcome projects across three domains:

AI & ML

• Fine-tuning pipelines
• Model serving endpoints
• Evaluation harnesses
• RAG pipelines
• Data processing jobs
• Agentic and multi-agent workflows
• Benchmarking setups
• MLOps
• Classical ML (CPU only)

Healthcare & Life Sciences

• Protein structure prediction inference
• Genomic variant processing pipelines
• Medical image segmentation endpoints
• Clinical text classification jobs
• Drug-target interaction scoring
• Bioinformatics batch workflows

Physical AI & Robotics

• Robot simulation batch jobs
• Sensor fusion inference endpoints
• Object detection and tracking pipelines
• Trajectory prediction models
• Sim-to-real transfer pipelines
• Digital twin data processing

What to submit

Every valid submission requires the following:

1. Code repository

A public GitHub or GitLab repository containing:

• Code that uses Nebius Serverless AI Jobs or Endpoints
• A Dockerfile or reference to public Docker images
• A README with setup instructions, hardware configuration, expected outputs, and approximate runtime or cost
• An open-source license
• No committed secrets or private data

2. Technical blog post

A post of at least 600 words, published on LinkedIn, Medium, DEV Community, a personal blog, Hashnode, or equivalent, that:

• Links to your repository
• Is tagged #NebiusServerlessChallenge
• Explains the problem, architecture, implementation, and results in your own words

3. Video walkthrough (optional but recommended)

A short video (3 to 10 minutes) walking through your project: what you built, why you chose this approach, and how Nebius Serverless fits in. Think of it as a companion to your blog post — something that lets judges see your project in action and understand your thinking directly.

You can publish it on YouTube, Loom, or any publicly accessible platform, and include the link in your submission form.

How submissions are judged

Submissions are evaluated by a panel of domain experts and Nebius engineers across six criteria: technical implementation, reproducibility, educational content quality, product usage depth, real-world usefulness, and originality. Every valid submission is reviewed, and the highest-scoring projects in each domain and category receive awards.

For full details on how each criterion is evaluated, see the Terms and Conditions.

Prizes

Place	Nebius credits	Gift	Extras
🥇 1st	$2,000	Branded pack 1	Serverless AI Champion Badge · Featured in Nebius blog posts · "Awesome Serverless Project" badge
🥈 2nd	$1,500	Branded pack 1	Serverless AI Champion Badge · Featured in Nebius blog posts · "Awesome Serverless Project" badge
🥉 3rd	$1,000	Branded pack 1	Serverless AI Champion Badge · Featured in Nebius blog posts · "Awesome Serverless Project" badge
Special Award × 6	$2,000	Branded pack 2	Serverless AI Champion Badge · Featured in Nebius blog posts · "Awesome Serverless Project" badge
Community Choice × 1	$1,000	Branded pack 2	Serverless AI Champion Badge · Featured in Nebius blog posts · "Awesome Serverless Project" badge
Awesome Serverless × up to 20	$1,000	—	Serverless AI Champion Badge · "Awesome Serverless Project" badge
All valid participants × up to 300	$100	—	Serverless AI Explorer Badge

Timeline

Date	Milestone
May 26, 2026	Challenge opens, submissions begin
July 15, 2026	Submission deadline at 23:59 UTC
July 25, 2026	Winners announced

Who can participate

• Individual developers, researchers, and data scientists
• Teams of up to 3 members
• Both new and existing Nebius customers
• Must be of legal age of majority in your country of residence

Not eligible: Nebius employees, contractors, or agents directly involved in organizing or judging the challenge.

New to Nebius? Create a free account at nebius.com to get started. Free trial credits are available for new registrations.

FAQ

Do I need an existing Nebius account? No. You can create a free account at sign-up. Free trial credits are available for new registrations.

Can I use my existing Nebius projects? Yes. Existing Nebius customers and anyone already using Nebius Serverless AI Jobs or Nebius Serverless AI Endpoints are fully eligible.

Can a team participate? Yes. Teams of up to three members are eligible. All team members must meet the eligibility requirements.

What counts as proof of execution? Screenshots of job logs, Nebius Serverless AI Endpoint URLs, notebook outputs, benchmark results, or any evidence that your project ran on Nebius infrastructure.

What open-source license do I need? Any recognized open-source license (MIT, Apache 2.0, GPL, etc.). The repository must be publicly accessible.

Will my code or blog post belong to Nebius? No. You retain all intellectual property rights. By participating, you grant Nebius a non-exclusive license to use your materials to promote the challenge and showcase examples — you remain free to use, license, or commercialize your own work. See the full Terms and Conditions.

What datasets can I use? Only publicly available datasets are accepted. Your submission must be fully reproducible by another practitioner without access to any private or proprietary data. Personal data of any kind is not permitted. HCLS submissions must use publicly available, anonymized, or synthetic datasets — patient data of any kind is not permitted.

How are ties broken? By the Nebius engineering lead, first on the Reproducibility criterion, then on community engagement signal.

Where do I submit? Via the Submit tab on this page, once you've signed in to Nebius Academy.

Who do I contact with questions? Email serverlesschallenge@nebius.com or ask in the #serverless channel on Discord.

Ready to build?

Register for the challenge and start building. When your project is ready, submit it from the Submit tab before July 15, 2026 at 23:59 UTC.

See the Terms and Conditions for full eligibility and prize details.