Amazon Nova AI Challenge: FAQs

The Amazon Nova AI Challenge is a university competition dedicated to accelerating the field of artificial intelligence (AI). It was created to recognize and advance students from around the globe who are shaping the future of artificial intelligence. Student teams are able to work on the latest challenges in the field of AI and build innovative solutions.

The Amazon Nova AI Challenge is a testbed for university students to experiment with and advance AI at scale. Participating teams compete to develop innovative and effective solutions to a specific challenge. Teams receive a number of forms of support, including stipends, AWS credits, and consultation and mentoring from the Amazon Nova AI Challenge team.

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The goal of the 2026 Amazon Nova AI Challenge: Trusted Software Agents track is to make effective AI systems that remain responsible and safe for all, with a focus on the task domain of agentic systems that assist users in the development of full stack web applications. The ultimate goal of the competition is to identify ways for LLM-enabled systems to handle more complex development tasks while anticipating and mitigating safety risks.

The Amazon Nova AI Challenge: Trusted Software Agents track is focused on ensuring LLMs supporting AI-assisted software development remain safe, reliable, and trustworthy. For the 2026 Nova AI Challenge, we will focus on web application development as the coding task domain, with verifiable pass/fail conditions as the primary utility measure for a model developer’s system. We will continue with the “tournament-style” format used in 2025, where ten university teams — five model developer (defense) teams and five red (attack) teams compete in a series of interactive tournaments. There is an increased emphasis on advances in utility (ability to handle more complex development tasks) in parallel with safety (avoiding vulnerabilities and risk of exploits as systems handle more complex tasks) this year. Also, red teams will build systems that detect and exploit vulnerabilities in the applications built by model developer teams. 

The Amazon Nova AI Challenge: Trusted Software Agents track is a natural extension of the Amazon Nova AI Challenge: Trusted AI track. Both focus on ensuring the safety of coding assistants. Trusted Software Agents adds additional emphasis on advances in coding utility and the domain has expanded from simpler code generation to software engineering tasks such as full stack web development. In the Trusted Software Agents track, the red teams will focus on using LLMs to identify potential vulnerabilities and exploits in applications; whereas the Trusted AI track focused on getting LLMs to generate malicious or vulnerable code.

There are multiple benefits of participating in the Amazon Nova AI Challenge: Trusted Software Agents track, including:

1. Dynamic feedback: Teams will get the opportunity to test their systems against best-in-class competitors. Unlike static benchmarks, the challenge evaluations are dynamic and multi-turn and evolve as both sets of teams refine their systems over the course of the competition.
2. AWS services: Participating teams will receive training, support, and access to the full suite of AWS services, with monthly AWS credits to support the cost of training and execution of their systems.
3. IP ownership: Teams retain ownership of their work and associated IP, and are encouraged to publish their research after Amazon’s review.
4. Stipend: Each team chosen for the Amazon Nova AI Challenge: Trusted Software Agents track will receive sponsorship in the amount of $250K. Funding is intended to support roughly two full-time students and one month of faculty time.
5. Cash prizes: For model developer teams, the top ranked team will receive $250K and the second ranked team will receive $100K. Red teams will also receive $250K for the top ranked team and $100K for the second ranked team. All cash prizes will be divided equally among the students on the team.

The finals event will be held in September 2026. This is a closed-door event and participating teams are not invited to the Finals event.

Yes, you may use other funding to support your team, subject to the terms described in the Challenge Rules. External funding must be disclosed to Amazon.

Yes, in fact publishing research papers as an outcome of your work on the Amazon Nova AI Challenge: Trusted Software Agents track is required for all teams participating in the competition, although teams may not publish any Amazon confidential information, as described in the Challenge Rules. The Amazon Nova AI Challenge requires all teams to submit a technical paper to be included in the challenge proceedings. Your team will not be selected for the finals if your team does not submit a technical paper for inclusion in the proceedings. Papers will be published online at the end of the competition and made publicly available through the Amazon Science website. Teams may also publish research papers in third-party publications and conferences, as long as all papers are provided to Amazon for review and approval at least two weeks before the submission deadline.

The Amazon Nova AI Challenge: Trusted Software Agents track will consist of a series of interactive tournaments held from early 2026 through summer 2026. Each tournament will consist of two phases: a build phase focused on coding utility performance and a validation phase focused on application security. 

In the build phase, model developers will interact with user simulators to implement new features for an existing web application. Their success will be determined using a suite of end-to-end test cases. In the validation phase, red team systems will have the opportunity to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in the applications created in the build phase. In addition to building their coding assistants, model developers will also be tasked with building simulations of malicious users, and red teams will be tasked with building simulations of benign users. In the build phase, the coding assistants will interact with both the benign user simulators and the malicious user simulators. The red teams will not have the opportunity to find vulnerabilities in the applications resulting from interaction with their own user simulators, and model developer bots will only be matched up with malicious simulators from other defending teams. At the conclusion of each tournament, teams on each side will be ranked with respect to their performance, and the results will be shared with each team.

Model developer teams will be ranked based on a combination of their coding utility performance and the security of the resulting applications. Coding utility performance will measure the number of tasks completed successfully across interactions with multiple user simulators (task success rate). Security performance will measure the number of resulting applications in which the red team bots do not find any vulnerabilities or exploits (defense success rate).

Red teams will be ranked on a combination of their coding utility performance and their effectiveness at identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in applications (attack success rate). Coding utility performance will measure the number of tasks completed successfully (task success rate) as their user simulator interacts with each of the model developer teams’ coding assistants. This motivates each red team to ensure their user simulator is realistic and effective. Attack success rate for red teams will be a measure of the number of applications from the build phase in which they successfully identify or exploit vulnerabilities. In the build phase, red teams have an indirect motivation to ensure the security of the applications built through interaction with their user simulator as in doing so they preclude the ability of other red teams to score attack success points on those applications.

The Amazon Nova AI Challenge: Trusted Software Agents track is open to full-time students (undergraduate or graduate) with some exceptions (see Challenge Rules). Proof of enrollment will be required to participate.

No. The Amazon Nova AI Challenge: Trusted Software Agents track is open only to full-time enrolled university students.

All participating team members must remain full-time students in good standing at their university while participating in the competition.

Participants must be at or above the age of majority in the country, state, province, or jurisdiction of residence at the time of entry.

Immediate family members and household members of Amazon employees, directors, and contractors are not eligible to participate. See Challenge Rules for additional restrictions.

All applications will be reviewed and evaluated by Amazon. Up to ten teams will be selected to compete in a tournament style competition.

There is no minimum or maximum number of team members. All team members must be enrolled in their university throughout their participation. All teams will receive a $250,000 grant regardless of how many members are on their team.

No. Teams must be composed of students attending the same university.

Yes, universities may have more than one team. Multiple teams cannot have the same faculty advisor.

No. You can only be a part of one team for the duration of the competition.

Yes, teams may be composed of undergraduate and graduate students.

All teams must nominate a faculty advisor and include the faculty advisor’s consent in the applications.

Yes, there may be up to three faculty advisors per team.

Faculty advisors will advise students on technical direction and be a sounding board for new ideas, similar to a graduate school advisor. They will also act as the official representative from the university for this competition.

During the competition, there will be a period of time during which faculty advisors may request to remove or add members to the team, subject to approval by Amazon. See Challenge Rules for details.

Only team members may work on their systems. However, the faculty advisor and other students and faculty members at your university may provide support and advice to your team and may co-author technical publications and research papers.

Begin the application via YouNoodle, which will be open only during the application period.

Once you have selected your team members, team leader, and faculty sponsor, you are ready to begin the application process. You may apply to both roles and if you do so Amazon will assign one of the two roles to your team.

We prefer that the team leader submit an application on behalf of the whole team. In case a team lead has not been chosen, then any member of the team may submit an application. Each team should only submit one application, and it must include all of your team members’  and Faculty advisors’ information.

There is no application fee.

All applications will be reviewed by a panel of experts from Amazon. Teams will be selected based on the following criteria: (1) the technical merit of the approach; (2) the novelty of the ideas; and (3) an assessment of the team’s ability to execute their plan. Please be sure to provide enough detail in your application to enable evaluation of your proposal.

Up to ten teams will be sponsored to participate in the competition. Each sponsored team’s university will receive a $250,000 research grant to help fund the team’s participation. In addition each participating team will receive AWS credits to support the development of their system, and support from the Amazon Nova AI Challenge team.

The grant is intended to support two full-time students for the duration of the competition and one month of the faculty advisor’s salary. No more than 35% of the research grant may be allocated to administrative fees. Entrant Teams will be expected to use the stipend towards any uncovered costs associated with bootcamp and or summit (if any). If your team would like to use the funds in another manner, your faculty advisor must receive approval from Amazon before doing so.

From the evaluation at the finals event, the two top ranked model developer teams and top two ranked red teams will receive awards. The two teams placed 1st in each role (i.e., red team and developer team) will receive $250,000 each, and the two teams in 2nd place will receive $100,000 each.