The Vietnam AI Innovation Challenge (VAIC) 2026 focused on turning AI ideas into deployable products by bridging businesses with young innovators, not merely awarding prizes.

Organisers emphasize VAIC’s goal of maturing promising ideas into market-ready products, with a clear emphasis on practical impact and commercial potential.

The judging panel featured AI experts from Vietnam and abroad, including representatives from AI Singapore, VIASM, and Nanjing University.

L-GPT 6.7 with Lawgic won VAIC 2026’s top prize of 10,000 USD for an AI-powered legal analysis platform that combines large language models with knowledge graphs to boost reasoning and information retrieval.

Lawgic’s L-GPT 6.7 team earned the first prize for an innovation that merges LLMs with graph-based reasoning for practical legal applications.

Quotes from organizers underscored the potential for AI adoption across sectors like banking and public services.

The top three teams received certificates of merit and scholarships for an AI Engineering Foundation course sponsored by AI Guru.

VAIC 2026 was co-organized by the National Innovation Centre, Meta, AI for Vietnam, FPT, and Duy Tan University, with support from SHB and other partners.

The event ran July 17–19, bringing together international organizations, businesses, and major tech players to support the hackathon and showcase AI solutions.

Nearly 1,500 contestants from 340 teams participated in a 48-hour hackathon, culminating in a Demo Day where the top teams presented working prototypes.

The program included an expert advisory board and judging panel guiding teams through rapid prototyping and final presentations.

Judges assessed projects on innovation, technical capability, practical application, and commercial potential, signaling Vietnam’s AI ecosystem maturing toward market-ready deployments.