2026 Vercel AI Accelerator recap
Vercel's 2026 AI Accelerator cohort completed a six-week program where 39 teams developed AI applications with mentorship from industry leaders, technical workshops, and partnership support. Demo Day winners Rex, Hacktron AI, and Roots received $100K+ in credits and prizes, with Rex also securing venture investment from Vercel.
On April 16th, 39 teams took the stage to pitch investors at Demo Day. During the prior six weeks, founders worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the Vercel team, our partners, and industry leaders to shape their ideas into the next generation of AI applications.
from around the world joined the 2026 cohort, building agents, developer tools, consumer apps, and vertical AI for finance, security, healthcare, and robotics. Teams
Each week, the cohort joined two sessions: a hands-on technical workshop and a fireside chat with an external speaker. The workshops covered the technical side of building AI products, from agents and models to deployment and scale.
The fireside chats brought in industry leaders, Vercel experts, and investors. Speakers included Peter Steinberger (OpenAI/OpenClaw) and the Windsurf team, with topics ranging from the state of AI to pricing, legal, sales, marketing, and fundraising.
Halfway through the program, the cohort came together with the broader Vercel startup ecosystem for Builder Day at Vercel's office. The day combined technical workshops, hands-on office hours with engineers from accelerator partners like AWS and Anthropic, open time to build and connect, and a special fireside chat between Malte Ubl (Vercel CTO) and Stephen Haney (Paper CEO).
Beyond the programming, every team got over $200K to build with on Vercel and across the AI stack:
After six weeks of building, the cohort showed their work at Demo Day. hosted the event at their offices, and each team had a few minutes to present to a room of VCs, AI leaders, and partners, with a panel of judges from across the AI ecosystem selecting the winners.Auth0
On Demo Day, judges scored teams on problem validity, technology fit, product quality, and each team's final pitch. Three teams took home $100K+ in credits and prizes, and the first-place team also received an investment from Vercel Ventures.
is building AI for the enterprise finance back office, unifying customer context across systems so agents can run accounts receivable end to end. In addition to credits, Rex received an investment from Vercel Ventures. Rex
is an AI teammate for security. As AI writes more of the code shipping into production, vulnerabilities scale with it. Hacktron integrates into the development lifecycle to find and remediate real, exploitable issues. Hacktron AI
is rebuilding how people buy and sell homes. Buyers save hundreds to thousands of dollars a month, and sellers net thousands more at closing. Roots
The 40 alumni from the last cohort have raised over $100M in venture funding, and several have been accepted to Y Combinator. , the 2025 winner, is now converting enterprise pilots into contracts and shipping new product lines in hours instead of weeks. Stably
Other teams from past cohorts, including , , and , have signed enterprise customers and formed partnerships through the program.Jigsaw StackBelli AIGeneral Translation
If you're an early-stage founder building in AI, you can apply for the next AI Accelerator program. We will open applications later this year.
Visit our to learn more and connect with our startups team. startup hub
Six weeks with the 2026 cohort
Winners
$100M+ in fundraising, and counting
Apply to the next cohort
Builder day
$8M in infrastructure and credits
Demo Day
1st: Rex
2nd: Hacktron AI
3rd: Roots
: , , , , , and moreVercel AI stackAI GatewaySandboxWorkflowsFluid Computev0
: , , , , , , , , , , , and PartnersAWSAnthropicOpenAIBrowserbaseElevenLabsAuth0WorkOSNotionModalNeonSupabasemore
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