SINGAPORE, Jan. 28, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — With a $1.88 million prize pool and a Bentley Bentayga S awaiting the ultimate champion in Dubai, AI Wars: WEEX Alpha Awakens, the flagship global AI trading hackathon launched by WEEX Labs-the innovation arm of global crypto exchange WEEX, serving over 6.2 million users across 150+ countries – has now entered its most intense phase.
This is more than a hackathon – it is a global stress test for the future of AI-powered finance.
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Preliminary Round in Full Swing
Global enthusiasm for the hackathon has reached a fever pitch as the preliminary round enters its final and most intense stage. A total of 788 teams are locked in fierce competition, battling head-to-head on the leaderboard as they fight for a limited number of coveted spots in the Finals.
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Running from January 12 to February 2, the preliminaries follow a group-based format, with 8-10 BUIDL teams per group deploying AI trading strategies using 1,000 USDT in live market conditions over three weeks. With rankings shifting in real time, every decision now carries weight. Only the best performers from each group will break through, advancing to the Finals for a higher-stakes showdown for AI trading supremacy.
Get live updates from the WEEX AI trading battlefield: https://bit.ly/4pY83MB
WEEX Global AI Hackathon Offline Events: Dubai Kickoff, Europe Tour, Worldwide Impact
While the competition unfolds online, AI Wars: WEEX Alpha Awakens is designed as a hybrid hackathon, combining global digital participation with real-world engagement. The Finals kick off in Dubai on Jan. 30, 2026, featuring the Open Day Workshop LIVE – two elite AI trading teams go head-to-head on a single stage, making real-time market decisions with no edits or filters, while live interviews break down their strategies for attendees and online viewers alike. Following Dubai, the tour continues for four weeks across Europe – Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, the UK, Russia, France, and Spain – offering workshops, university sessions, live Finals broadcasts, on-site trading challenges, and human-versus-AI trading battles.
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These offline events transform AI Wars into a traveling AI trading laboratory, bridging developers, traders, and institutions as AI strategies move from code into live markets.
Top-Tier Sponsors Boosting Global Impact of WEEX AI Trading Hackathon
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AI Wars: WEEX Alpha Awakens is backed by a strong lineup of global sponsors, led by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Alibaba Cloud, alongside Web3 and AI leaders including Hubble AI, CoinGecko, and Cryptoracle. Partners across cloud, AI tooling, and Web3 data provide participants with institutional-grade infrastructure, cloud credits, exclusive APIs, and advanced market intelligence, enabling teams to build production-ready AI trading systems.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
The AWS Web3 team delivers ultra-low-latency infrastructure for top exchanges worldwide and, through Amazon Bedrock, provides access to leading foundation models from Anthropic Claude, Meta Llama, Cohere, and AI21 Labs-enabling secure, scalable next-generation trading systems backed by the AWS Startup program. As the Title Sponsor, AWS, together with AISANIE, is providing $1,000,000 in AWS Activate Credits to support AI trading teams with scalable infrastructure, production-ready AI tooling, and the ability to build, test, and deploy at global scale. Each winning team can receive up to $50,000 in AWS support, giving participants the resources to compete, innovate, and showcase their strategies on a global stage.
Tencent Cloud
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Tencent Cloud, one of the world’s leading cloud companies, powers global digital transformation with innovative cloud, AI, Big Data, and security solutions. Tencent Cloud constantly serves industries, including gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, and more-backed by data centers in 22 geographic areas on five continents with 64 availability zones, and 3,200+ acceleration nodes globally.
Hubble AI
Hubble AI is constructing next-generation AI agent trading infrastructure for fully autonomous, on-chain financial agents, backed by a team from Point72, Millennium, SBI Group, Tesla, and Coinbase, with strategic support from YZi Labs and Vernal Group-bringing institutional-grade expertise into the AI agent era.
Alibaba Cloud
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Alibaba Cloud, as a global leader in cloud and AI, exclusively provides Qwen large-model API support and plays a deep role in designing and building the hackathon’s AI trading platform, ensuring that participants can integrate cutting-edge large-model capabilities directly into real trading systems.
CoinGecko
CoinGecko contributes the world’s most comprehensive crypto data API, delivering real-time and historical data across 20M+ assets, 1,700+ exchanges, and 250+ blockchains, trusted by industry leaders including Coinbase and MetaMask.
Cryptoracle
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Cryptoracle powers the hackathon with AI-driven private data infrastructure, giving participants rare insight into the market’s deepest signals-turning AI Wars into a truly global proving ground for intelligent trading.
In AI Wars, talent meets technology, ambition meets opportunity, and the future of trading is built one line of code at a time.
Why WEEX AI Wars Matters: Driving Global AI Trading Innovation and Talent Discovery
AI Wars: WEEX Alpha Awakens is WEEX’s strategic push into the future of trading, accelerating platform intelligence and discovering top AI strategists. The hackathon gives AI trading and quant finance teams a rare chance to test models in real markets with transparency, open development, and real capital. For the global crypto community, AI Wars marks a new era-where algorithms compete openly, talent is discovered worldwide, and AI becomes a core trading primitive. Here, code is capital, strategy is identity, and the future of trading unfolds in real time.
About WEEX
Founded in 2018, WEEX has developed into a global crypto exchange with over 6.2 million users across more than 150 countries. The platform emphasizes security, liquidity, and usability, providing over 1,200 spot trading pairs and offering up to 400x leverage in crypto futures trading. In addition to traditional spot and derivatives markets, WEEX is expanding rapidly in the AI era – delivering real-time AI news, empowering users with AI trading tools, and exploring innovative trade-to-earn models that make intelligent trading more accessible to everyone. Its 1,000 BTC Protection Fund further strengthens asset safety and transparency, while features such as copy trading and advanced trading tools allow users to follow professional traders and experience a more efficient, intelligent trading journey.
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