At Nirvana, AI isn’t just a tool in our stack. It shapes how teams across the company build, decide, and operate every day. That way of working is part of our AI-native DNA. This December, we once again hosted our annual company-wide AI Hackathon, with a simple goal: create space for everyone, not just engineers, to build with AI.
The hackathon was designed to be both practical and energizing: a chance to experiment hands-on, collaborate across teams, and rethink everyday workflows using modern AI tools.
What followed was one of the most collaborative and eye-opening days we’ve had as a company.
An AI Hackathon for the Entire Company
The true measure of an AI-native organization isn’t what the R&D team builds, but what the rest of the company does when given the right tools. For this hackathon, we focused on lowering the barrier to building so every team member could work on the problems they know best.
Behind the scenes, an internal group of AI champions coordinated model and API access, set up shared workspaces, and showcased new capabilities—from AI-powered compliance reviews and dynamic audio generation to content summarization and custom-built agents.
A Day of Building and Learning
As a global organization, we had to coordinate teams across time zones and continents. Some groups met in person; others collaborated remotely. Throughout the day, Slack filled with questions, quick demos, and rapid feedback. Teams helped each other debug, iterate, and refine ideas. Non-technical teammates paired with engineers to bring domain expertise to life.
The result was a day that felt both focused and fun; and for many teammates, a shift in how they think about what’s possible with AI in their own roles.
What Teams Built in a Single Day
By the end of the hackathon, we saw 26 completed projects, 60% of them led by non-technical groups. Several showed immediate efficiency gains; others pointed toward longer-term platform and product opportunities. While we’re being purposefully vague to protect some of the innovations we plan to fully launch, here are a few flavors of what teams built:
- Our People team leaders partnered with engineering to build an AI coaching “wingman” to support managers and team members with things like 1:1 prep, feedback summaries, and growth plan drafts.
- Engineers and data scientists created AI copilots and “AI interns” to assist with investigations, analysis, and internal tooling—helping them get from raw data to initial hypotheses faster
- Finance teams built agents to streamline and automate day-to-day operational workflows such as pulling, reconciling, and explaining key metrics across systems
- Compliance teams prototyped AI assistants to support regulatory reporting and documentation, parsing rules and mapping them to internal controls
- Business and underwriting teams explored tools that turned complex data into faster, clearer decisions by surfacing decision-ready summaries instead of raw inputs
More than the output, the hackathon reinforced the Nirvana way of solving problems: experiment directly, learn fast, and build solutions that meaningfully improve what we deliver for customers.
Looking Ahead
As the year came to a close, the hackathon left teams energized and curious about what comes next.
Many of the ideas will continue to evolve into tools and products, but all of them elevated our shared understanding of how AI fits into everyday work at Nirvana.
The hackathon reinforced a belief we hold strongly: AI creates the most impact when everyone is empowered to build with it, every day.
