On the morning of November 27, at the Ho Chi Minh City Innovative Startup Center, the closing ceremony and award ceremony of the contest “Ho Chi Minh City Artificial Intelligence Challenge (AI Challenge) 2025” took place, within the framework of the Ho Chi Minh City Innovation, Science and Technology and Creative Startup Week (WISE HCMC⁺ 2025).

Director of the Department of Science and Technology of Ho Chi Minh City Lam Dinh Thang (6th from right) awarded logos and certificates of merit to the winning teams. Photo: QUANG HUY

The contest was hosted by the Department of Science and Technology of Ho Chi Minh City, in collaboration with the National University of Ho Chi Minh City, the Department of Education and Training, the Youth Union, the Ho Chi Minh City Informatics Association and the Center for Young Science and Technology Development. The event attracted the participation of more than 200 students and representatives of departments, branches, schools and science and technology units.

Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training Nguyen Bao Quoc (6th from right) awarded logos and certificates of merit to the winning teams. Photo: QUANG HUY

With the theme “Virtual assistant supports querying information from multimedia big data warehouses”, this year’s contest attracted nearly 4,000 contestants from 797 teams from 194 units across the country to participate. After the selection rounds, 80 excellent teams entered the final round, the Organizing Committee awarded prizes to 41 typical teams in both groups A (students) and group B (high school students).

In Group A, the OpenCubee-1 team (University of Information Technology – VNU Ho Chi Minh City) won the first prize; the OpenCubee-2 team (a joint effort of the University of Information Technology, University of Natural Sciences and the University of Science and Technology – VNU Ho Chi Minh City) won the second prize; the LunchRetrieval team (University of Information Technology) won the third prize.

Deputy Director of the Department of Planning and Planning of Ho Chi Minh City Vo Minh Thanh spoke at the award ceremony. Photo: QUANG HUY

In Group B, the WuDButterflies team (Ngo Quyen High School) won the first prize; the LoveLAND2 team (High School for the Gifted – VNU Ho Chi Minh City) won the second prize and the Non-chalant team (Gia Dinh High School) won the third prize.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Mr. Vo Minh Thanh, Deputy Director of the Department of Science and Technology of Ho Chi Minh City, Head of the Organizing Committee of the contest, highly highly appreciated this year’s teams for applying core technologies such as platform language modeling, multimodal search, intelligent inference and interaction. The products demonstrate the strong technical level, creativity and aspiration for international integration of the young generation.

He said that the Department of Science and Technology of Ho Chi Minh City will continue to promote the connection between schools – businesses – scientific organizations, put AI products into practical application, and at the same time expand the scale of the contest in the coming years.

Teams participating in the contest. Photo: QUANG HUY

The teams gathered their intellect and strength at the contest. Photo: QUANG HUY

Teams from the university. Photo: QUANG HUY

High school team. Photo: QUANG HUY

The AI Challenge has been held since 2020, is an initiative to promote research and application of AI to solve practical problems, serving the construction of smart cities. From 2023, the contest will expand its audience to high school students and increasingly affirm that it is a prestigious academic playground in the field of artificial intelligence in Vietnam.