Anthropic's 1st global hackathon draws 13,000 applicants
Anthropic just wrapped up a six-day global hackathon that drew 13,000 applicants—and many winners weren't traditional engineers.
Using Opus 4.6 and Claude Code, people from all backgrounds built hundreds of projects, with big interest from medicine, law, and education.
Up for grabs: $100,000 in Claude API credits.
Top prizes went to non-engineers
Non-engineers took the spotlight. Dr. Michal Nedoszytko, a cardiologist from Brussels, built PostVisit.ai during hospital shifts and flights—an app that helps review medical history and explains diagnoses to ease clinician burnout.
The top prize went to lawyer Mike Brown for CrossBeam (a California permitting tool).
Other cool entries included an AI band by a musician and a road investment app by a Ugandan worker.
AI is changing who can build software
This hackathon showed that you don't necessarily need to be a coder to turn ideas into working software now—AI tools are making it possible for some people with expertise in their field to build solutions fast.
It's a big shift for how new tech gets made and who gets to make it.