Prizes awarded under this competition will be paid by electronic funds transfer. Winners are responsible for any applicable local, State, and Federal taxes and reporting that may be required under applicable tax laws.
TOTAL PRIZE POOL
$225,0005 finalists receive $25,000
1 grand prize winner receives $100,000
From the $225,000 Challenge prize pool funds, up to five finalist teams will be awarded $25,000 each following the judging of the open submissions. Finalists will improve and iterate upon their submissions during the Virtual Accelerator phase in preparation for Demonstration Day (“Demo Day”). After Demo Day, a judging panel will provide recommendations to ED on the selection of one or more winners from the pool of finalists to receive the remainder of the prize money and the additional prizes described below.
IBM will offer award packages to one Challenge winner for their ongoing use of Bluemix. If the IBM Award recipient is a “Student” team, IBM will provide up to one year of free access to Bluemix for learning purposes, and if the Challenge winner is an “Entrepreneur or Startup”, IBM will provide access to the IBM Global Entrepreneur Program for Cloud Startups (up to $120,000 value, see http://ibm.co/1pIsleq). The Challenge winner may also receive 80 hours of technical consulting by an IBM senior developer or architect over a 6 month period after the winner announcement. The Challenge award winner will be eligible to showcase their application in the Application Gallery hosted on IBM developerWorks.
Microsoft will award one Challenge winner with an invitation to the BizSpark Plus program, inclusive of up to $120,000 Azure cloud services, free software, developer tools, and technical support for one year. The winner must be a qualified start up to be eligible for BizSpark Plus (see https://www.microsoft.