Strong Compute

We’ve been running GPU hackathons in San Francisco and Sydney to see what happens when you give smart people full access to compute. 100+ engineers across SF and Sydney got access to powerful GPUs for 24 hours. Some fine-tuned LLMs. Others trained chess bots on hundreds of thousands of games. A few built things we definitely didn’t see coming. We loved it. No infra setup. Just ideas → code → running jobs → results. Read the full recap and see what people built at our last event: 👉 https://lnkd.in/gcfJBQwi Join our next hackathon to work on ARC Prize or Fine-Tune Deep Seek April 18–19. Apply now — https://lnkd.in/g58tAs2H #gpu #ai #hackathon #infra #developerexperience #machinelearning #strongcompute #deepseek #arcprize #finetuning

🚀 Tech Events Roundup: Top Tech Events You Can't Miss 🚀 This week is packed with exciting technological events that are set to spark innovation and shape the future! 🔹GTC Hack Night - SF Bay Area Builders, Adam Chan, Chia Hwu & Dr Punnet Anand 🔗https://lnkd.in/g-RFPY7w 🔹Built on Bedrock Demo Nights - AWS GenAI Loft Events & Arte Merritt 🔗https://lu.ma/c65g5wju 🔹Networking in AI & Tech, hosted by Microsoft & NVIDIA - Microsoft Events & Insurgi Media Group 🔗 https://lu.ma/70uceufh 🔹Unstructured Data Workshop with Milvus and OpenAI - Milvus & Stefan Webb 🔗https://lu.ma/ncr07fnd 🔹Engineers Only: GPU Hackathon – Fine-Tune DeepSeek + Master Chess 🇺🇸 - Strong Compute, Rebecca Pham & Ben Sand 🔗https://lu.ma/7nbbmk0w #TechEvents #Innovation #TechnologyTrends #DigitalTransformation #Learning #Networking #BusinessNetworking #AIConference

Congrats to the Winners of Our Latest AI Chess + Deep Seek Hackathon! ♟️ 🐋 🎉 Last month, we wrapped up two epic hackathons—our Chess AI Hackathon and the first-ever Deep Seek Hackathon! It was incredible to see the energy, innovation, and cutting-edge research projects that emerged over just 48 hours. A huge shoutout to the winning teams and everyone who pushed the boundaries of AI, from mastering strategic gameplay to fine-tuning Deep Seek for creative use cases. 💡 Want to join the next one? 🔜 SF: March 21-22 https://lnkd.in/gS_bTH4a 🔜 Sydney: March 22-23 https://lnkd.in/grbwSzMB Engineers only. Spots fill up fast—see you there! 🔥 #AI #Hackathon #ChessAI #DeepSeek

Announcing Our 7th Hackathon: Fine-Tune DeepSeek + Chess AI ♟️🐋 Join us for an intense 2 day hackathon where you’ll have the option to fine-tune DeepSeek or build AI-powered chess bots—all while getting exclusive early access to Strong Compute’s newest features. 📅 Dates: 📍 San Francisco: Feb 21-22 📍 Sydney: Feb 22-23 🔗 Register now: SF: https://lnkd.in/g6kZFShe Sydney: https://lnkd.in/gYSsJPGU ⚡ Engineers only. Limited spots. Don’t miss out!

This week, China’s AI lab DeepSeek rattled global tech — particularly Nvidia, which suffered the largest single-day corporate value loss in US history on Monday. DeepSeek announced it had built a competitive AI model for just US$6 million using older AI chips, raising questions about the future demand for high-end chips. However, some Australian investors and founders aren’t sold on this narrative. They believe that this kind of innovation will ultimately drive AI chip sales up, not down. Capital Brief’s Daniel Van Boom spoke to Munro Partners’ Nick Griffin and Alex Pollak, CIO at Loftus Peak as well as Ben Sand founder of Strong Compute, a Y Combinator, Blackbird, and Peak XV Partners backed startup that helps companies develop AI more efficiently. Read the full story 👉 https://lnkd.in/g4aYXjci

Last chance to join our final chess hackathon of the year this Friday & Saturday in SF! Calling all engineers/AI researchers experienced with PyTorch. Help us refine the ultimate platform for building and training models while having a blast. 📅 Event details & registration: https://lnkd.in/g94c8DG6 ♟️ Check out the latest chess winners’ write-up: https://lnkd.in/grdXRBAg #chess #hackathon #ai #ml #pytorch

Scaling AI Research from 4 to 60+ GPUs: How Strong Compute Enabled InSite's AI for Construction Monitoring. Insite Project Solutions Pty Ltd is developing AI monitoring for Construction Projects. The challenge was getting large scale compute and managing 160 people across 26 research teams. With Strong Compute, Insite scaled from 4 to 60+ GPUs, enabling seamless collaboration across teams and accelerating AI development—all without the need for hands-on infrastructure management. Curious how Insite tackled these challenges and achieved: ✅ Real-time construction monitoring using high-resolution AI models ✅ Improved performance and cost efficiency ✅ A streamlined experience for his entire research team Check out the full case study here: https://lnkd.in/ghHVFDt6 Cian Byrne MACS CT, MAICD Consilium Solutions #AI #ConstructionTech #ResearchAtScale #StrongCompute #AIInfra #ClusterOps #FinOps #ML

I’m extremely delighted and excited to share that Gopi Maguluri and myself (as team Theta Hat) won the Strong Compute GPU Chess Hackathon competing against developers and machine learning engineers from San Francisco and Sydney. Our solution is a deep learning based chess bot that utilized a chess vision model enhanced with Self-Attention and Squeeze-and-Excitation Layers. By training on Grand Master Games data and leveraging the power of not 1, not 2, but a 48 GPU cluster, we significantly enhanced computational efficiency, resulting in a model that is exceptionally powerful. Being part of this hackathon was an extraordinary experience. Witnessing the scale of over 1,600 GPUs on the Strong Compute's platform was awe-striking and a testament to the possibilities of high-performance computing. We got to compete against other teams in a classic chess tournament fashion, where we made our models go head to head against others. Throughout this event, we got the opportunity to fine tune our PyTorch skills and different deep learning model architectures. We are always excited and looking forward to connecting with individuals in ML and AI to explore new ideas and opportunities. A huge shout out and a big thank you to Ben Sand, Zac S., Adam Peaston, Rebecca Pham and the entire Strong Compute team for hosting this event and to all the amazing participants for making it a memorable and inspiring experience. Here's to pushing boundaries and taking on new challenges! Repo : https://lnkd.in/gtqaD4RD Video : https://lnkd.in/g5QgUNz4 #MachineLearning #DeepLearning #Hackathon #StrongCompute #ChessBot #Innovation #WinningTeam

I’m extremely delighted and excited to share that Venkatachalam Subramanian Periya Subbu and myself (as team Theta Hat) won the Strong Compute GPU Chess Hackathon competing against developers and machine learning engineers from San Francisco and Sydney. Our solution is a deep learning based chess bot that utilized a chess vision model enhanced with Self-Attention and Squeeze-and-Excitation Layers. By training on Grand Master Games data and leveraging the power of not 1, not 2, but a 48 GPU cluster, we significantly enhanced computational efficiency, resulting in a model that is exceptionally powerful. Being part of this hackathon was an extraordinary experience. Witnessing the scale of over 1,600 GPUs on the Strong Compute's platform was awe-striking and a testament to the possibilities of high-performance computing. We got to compete against other teams in a classic chess tournament fashion, where we made our models go head to head against others. Throughout this event, we got the opportunity to fine tune our PyTorch skills and different deep learning model architectures. We are always excited and looking forward to connecting with individuals in ML and AI to explore new ideas and opportunities. A huge shout out and a big thank you to Ben Sand, Zac S., Adam Peaston, Rebecca Pham and the entire Strong Compute team for hosting this event and to all the amazing participants for making it a memorable and inspiring experience. Here's to pushing boundaries and taking on new challenges! Repo : https://lnkd.in/ghhmuWiy Video : https://lnkd.in/gJvjrxK6 #MachineLearning #DeepLearning #Hackathon #StrongCompute #ChessBot #Innovation #WinningTeam

🌍✨ AI Compute for Everyone: The Dyson Sphere Our Founder and CEO Ben Sand recently spoke at AI For Good, sharing how Strong Compute is democratizing AI compute to unlock innovation for all. His talk dives into our vision to make AI accessible and impactful for everyone—from startups to industry giants—by delivering powerful, affordable compute resources designed to tackle today’s most pressing challenges. Read more about the vision and watch the full talk: https://lnkd.in/gcV9Sqyj Thank you for hosting us Yurii Filipchuk 🇺🇦 -- e/acc Artur Kiulian Amazon Web Services (AWS) #AIForGood #StrongCompute #AICompute #DemocratizingAI #AIInnovation