BUILT IN LONDON: VERCEL X OPEN AI
Summary
On June 12th, 2026, during London Tech Week, Vercel and OpenAI took over the industrial arches at 83 Rivington Street for Built in London: an exclusive, high-stakes hackathon for the UK’s top AI ecosystem. The event brought together a highly curated room of AI founders, engineers, and tier-one investors for a intensive day of live building. Moving past experimental concepts, the strict mandate for the day was to ship real, production-ready applications and autonomous agents capable of solving immediate, real-world workflows.
The Experience
The atmosphere balanced deep engineering focus with main-stage momentum. The day kicked off with lightning technical briefings from Vercel CPO Tom Occhino and OpenAI’s VB, alongside platform deep-dives from partners at Supabase, ElevenLabs, and Auth0. Armed with credits and advanced agent tooling, builders spent the afternoon locked into an intense four-hour sprint. Teams worked directly alongside core engineers from Vercel to optimize their code, deploy to the edge, and prepare their repositories for an elite dual-stage judging panel that featured technical leaders and venture capitalists from Dawn Capital.
Impact & Key Highlights
The Ultimate Stage: The winning builds earned the right to headline Vercel’s Day Zero party at The Outernet London, showcasing their applications on some of the largest, highest-resolution digital screens in the world to an audience of tech executives and global partners.
Curated Ecosystem Collaboration: The event successfully bridged the gap between raw technical building and venture capital, putting active founders directly in front of leading investors like Dawn Capital.
Flawless Delivery: Leveraging the venue’s industrial architecture and high-specification tech footprint, the event seamlessly balanced deep technical hacking, live main-stage presentations, media production crews, and premium outdoor catering via local food trucks.
