AIxIndustry Challenge Program

Real-World Challenges. Innovative AI Solutions. Industrial Impact.

The AIxIndustry Challenge Program is a year-round initiative dedicated to connecting real-world industrial challenges with artificial intelligence research, development, and innovation. The program invites companies and organizations across industries to identify meaningful problems, unmet needs, and emerging opportunities that could benefit from advances in AI.

By bringing together industry practitioners, AI researchers, academics, students, entrepreneurs, and technology innovators, the program creates opportunities to formulate challenging problems, explore innovative approaches, develop solutions, and translate AI advances into practical industrial applications.

The program operates throughout the year, with the annual AIxIndustry conference serving as its major gathering point for presenting industrial challenges, showcasing AI solutions, recognizing outstanding contributions, and fostering new industry–academia collaborations.

We believe that industry should not simply adopt existing AI technologies. Industry should actively participate in defining the problems that inspire and drive the next generation of AI.

Turning Industrial Challenges into AI Opportunities

Many important industrial problems remain difficult to solve using existing technologies and AI capabilities. Addressing these challenges requires collaboration between those who understand real-world industrial needs and those who develop new AI technologies and solutions.

The AIxIndustry Challenge Program provides a platform for this collaboration. Companies and organizations contribute their challenges, while the broader AI community explores potential solutions through research, experimentation, innovation, and collaborative problem solving.

Our goal is to bridge the gap between industrial needs and AI innovation, creating mutual value for industry and the AI research community.

How the Program Works

The program follows a collaborative problem-solving process:

Submit Challenges: Companies and organizations identify and submit real-world problems, unmet needs, and opportunities that may benefit from AI technologies. Submissions are welcome throughout the year.
Formulate Problems: AIxIndustry works with industry participants and the AI community to clarify, formulate, and characterize the challenges into meaningful problems suitable for research and development.
Explore Solutions: Researchers, academics, students, entrepreneurs, and technology developers explore potential approaches using generative AI, classical AI, machine learning, robotics, and other computational techniques.
Develop and Evaluate: Promising approaches are developed into prototypes, proof-of-concept systems, or experimental solutions and evaluated against relevant requirements and performance criteria.
Collaborate and Implement: Industry partners and solution developers explore opportunities for further collaboration, technology transfer, commercialization, and real-world deployment.

Challenge Submission Categories

To accommodate different industry needs and levels of participation, the program offers two submission categories:

Open Challenges

Open Challenges are problems that companies and organizations are willing to share publicly with the broader AI community. These challenges can inspire independent research, student projects, collaborative problem solving, and innovative solution development.

Partner Challenges

Partner Challenges are submitted by companies and organizations interested in more focused collaboration with selected researchers, universities, startups, or technology developers. These challenges may involve proprietary information, specialized requirements, or potential commercial applications. Access, confidentiality, intellectual property, and collaboration arrangements will be established separately with the participating partners.

Both categories welcome challenges at different stages, from early-stage problem identification to well-defined technical and industrial problems.

Program Mechanisms

The AIxIndustry Challenge Program operates through three complementary mechanisms:

Industry Challenge Submission: Companies and organizations submit challenges throughout the year. AIxIndustry helps identify relevant expertise, refine problem descriptions, and connect challenges with potential contributors.
AI Solution Collaboration: Researchers, students, entrepreneurs, startups, and technology providers explore submitted challenges and collaborate with industry partners to develop potential solutions. Activities may include research projects, student projects, technical experiments, prototypes, and proof-of-concept development.
Challenge Showcase and Recognition: Selected challenges and promising solutions are presented through AIxIndustry conference sessions, technical presentations, demonstrations, and collaborative events. Outstanding challenges, solutions, and contributions may receive recognition through the program.

These mechanisms create a continuous cycle of industry engagement, AI innovation, and collaborative problem solving.

Who Can Participate?

Companies and Industry Organizations: Submit industrial challenges, share domain expertise, provide practical requirements, and collaborate on potential solutions.
AI Researchers and Academics: Explore challenging problems, propose new approaches, conduct research, and advance AI capabilities.
University Students: Participate in problem solving, develop innovative projects, and gain experience addressing real-world industrial challenges.
Entrepreneurs and Startups: Develop innovative AI solutions, explore new business opportunities, and connect with potential industry partners.
AI Technology Providers: Contribute technologies, tools, platforms, and technical expertise to address industrial needs.
Investors and Innovation Partners: Identify promising technologies, support emerging solutions, and facilitate commercialization.

Challenge Areas

The program welcomes challenges from diverse industrial sectors, including:

Agriculture, Forestry, and Food
Aerospace, Aviation, and Defense
Automotive and Transportation
Banking, Finance, and Insurance
Construction and Real Estate
Consumer Goods and Retail
Education and Training
Energy and Utilities
Healthcare and Life Sciences
Hospitality, Tourism, and Entertainment
Information Technology and Telecommunications
Manufacturing and Industrial Systems
Media and Communications
Mining and Natural Resources
Professional and Business Services
Public Administration and Government

Challenges may address business operations, industrial processes, product development, intelligent automation, decision support, resource optimization, safety, sustainability, and other areas where AI can create meaningful value.

Types of Challenges

We welcome a broad range of industrial challenges, including:

AI Capability Challenges: Problems requiring new or improved AI capabilities beyond what existing technologies can adequately provide.
Operational Challenges: Problems involving efficiency, productivity, quality, resource allocation, and process optimization.
Product and Service Innovation: Opportunities to create new AI-enabled products, services, and business models.
Automation and Robotics: Challenges involving intelligent machines, autonomous systems, and human–AI collaboration.
Data and Knowledge Challenges: Problems involving data integration, knowledge discovery, analytics, and intelligent decision making.
Trustworthiness and Reliability: Challenges involving AI accuracy, robustness, safety, explainability, security, and reliability.
Sustainability Challenges: Opportunities to apply AI to energy efficiency, environmental protection, and sustainable industrial development.

What Industry Partners Gain

Participating companies and organizations can benefit from:

Access to a broader community of AI researchers, innovators, and emerging talent.
New perspectives and approaches to addressing difficult industrial problems.
Opportunities to explore AI technologies and capabilities beyond existing commercial solutions.
Connections with universities, research institutions, startups, and technology providers.
Opportunities for collaborative research, prototyping, and proof-of-concept development.
Potential pathways to technology transfer, commercialization, and industrial deployment.
Recognition for contributing meaningful challenges to AI innovation.

Collaboration, Confidentiality, and Intellectual Property

AIxIndustry welcomes both publicly shareable challenges and challenges requiring focused partner collaboration.

For Open Challenges, submitted descriptions will be prepared for public sharing with the AIxIndustry community. Submitters should exclude confidential, proprietary, personal, or otherwise sensitive information.

For Partner Challenges, access to information and collaboration will be limited to mutually agreed participants. Confidentiality agreements, intellectual property ownership, licensing, data access, and publication rights should be addressed through separate agreements among the relevant parties before sensitive information is exchanged or collaborative work begins.

AIxIndustry facilitates connections and opportunities for collaboration. Specific research, development, and commercialization arrangements remain subject to agreements among the participating organizations and contributors.

Challenge Showcase and Recognition

AIxIndustry encourages the presentation and discussion of submitted challenges and promising solutions through annual conference sessions, technical presentations, demonstrations, and collaborative activities. Recognition may be given to:

Outstanding Industry Challenges: Meaningful and impactful problems that inspire new AI research and innovation.
Outstanding AI Solutions: Innovative and promising approaches to addressing industrial challenges.
Outstanding Collaborations: Successful partnerships between industry, academia, and the AI innovation community.
Outstanding Contributions: Individuals and organizations making significant contributions to the program.

The program aims not only to recognize successful solutions but also to encourage new discoveries, inspire further research, and generate additional challenges.

Submit an Industrial Challenge

Do you have a challenging industrial problem that existing AI technologies cannot adequately solve? Are you interested in exploring new AI capabilities or collaborating with researchers and innovators?

We invite companies and organizations to share their challenges with the AIxIndustry community throughout the year. A challenge submission may include:

Organization and industry sector.
Challenge title and problem description.
Industrial context and motivation.
Current approaches and their limitations.
Desired outcomes and potential impact.
Relevant technical or operational requirements.
Preferred submission category: Open Challenge or Partner Challenge.
Contact information and potential collaboration interests.

Submissions will be reviewed to determine their suitability for the program and potential opportunities for collaboration. Submission does not guarantee that a challenge will be selected for public presentation or matched with a solution team.

Bring Us Your Challenges.

Join the AIxIndustry Challenge Program

Whether you are an organization seeking solutions to difficult problems or an innovator looking for meaningful challenges, the AIxIndustry Challenge Program provides a platform to connect, collaborate, and create impact.

Participate throughout the year and help turn industrial challenges into opportunities for AI innovation.

Identify Problems. Explore Possibilities. Develop Solutions. Advance AI.