Seventy projects have advanced to the finals of the Global Open-source AI Challenge (GOAI) after competing against 2,999 entries worldwide. The finalists will gather on Sept 22 and 23 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, to compete for titles in four tracks and the overall GOAI Grand Prize.

Since registration opened on July 16, the competition has attracted more than 14,000 developers from 91 countries and regions. After multiple rounds of evaluation, 15 projects advanced from the New Intelligence Infrastructure track, 15 from Boundless Applications, 20 from Frontier Exploration, and 20 from the Embodied Future track, in line with the competition rules.

Evaluations have increasingly focused on practical performance rather than project concepts, with teams required to submit updated proposals, technical implementations, working demonstrations, and verification materials, and to explain their technical approaches, engineering readiness, research methods, application value, and open-source practices through online defenses.

The shortlisted projects reflect a shift in AI competition toward system capabilities and real-world validation. Projects cover multi-agent collaboration and security, end-to-end business applications, AI-assisted research, and embodied AI operating in physical environments.

The finals will be held at Cloud Valley Center and will feature live demonstrations and defenses. The competition offers a total prize pool of 5 million yuan ($745,428), including a 1 million yuan grand prize, plus cloud resources, expert guidance, scenario testing, startup acceleration, and investment matchmaking.