Firebird Build took place on September 26-27 at AI9 Startup Campus in Yerevan, bringing together engineers and researchers for a 24-hour development sprint. Participants used artificial intelligence tools to turn ideas into working prototypes aimed at real-world problems.
The event was organized by Firebird in collaboration with OpenAI, NVIDIA, Picsart, the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE), AI9 and YerevaNN. Firebird Co-Founder Alexandr Yesayan said the initiative reflects the company’s goal of bringing AI computing capacity and technology to markets with strong talent and expertise but limited access to established infrastructure.
Teams were tasked with building working product prototypes within 24 hours using OpenAI Codex, supported by mentorship from technology professionals. Projects focused on robotics and physical AI, healthcare, environmental protection, cybersecurity and other areas. UATE Executive Director Edita Ghazaryan said the organizers received more than 500 applications and also welcomed a team from Georgia.
The total prize package amounted to $105,000, including $80,000 in cash and $25,000 in OpenAI API credits. First place went to PhotonicsAI, which developed an AI control environment integrated with hardware, earning $50,000 in cash and $12,000 in API credits. Second place went to “Why isn’t there an Ollama for VLAs?”, which built infrastructure for training vision-language-action (VLA) models for robotics, receiving $20,000 in cash and $8,000 in API credits.
Third place was awarded to EXPM for its autonomous security platform powered by AI agents that identifies vulnerabilities, proposes fixes and tests them automatically. The team received $10,000 in cash and $5,000 in OpenAI API credits. Participant Sargis Ginosyan, whose team created a product for the advertising industry, said the event helped them achieve in one day what could otherwise have taken months.
