Gulf Times reports that Team YOLO, an all-female team from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, won the Qai x Hugging Face hackathon in Doha. Its winning project, AquaGuard, is an AI early-warning system for desalination plants.
Team YOLO and the other winners received compute credits from Hugging Face, the open-source AI model hub and community, and from Qai, a technology company headquartered in Qatar.
It was Qai’s first hackathon. Over 140 engineers, students, and researchers from across Doha’s technology community took part at M7 (Msheireb Cultural Forum). Hugging Face’s event page lists it as a 48-hour, in-person build from 5 to 7 November 2026, for teams of two to four, by application only.
In total, 45 teams built working AI prototypes that tackle a challenge in Qatar, using open-source models and tools on Hugging Face. Projects covered healthcare, nutrition, Arabic language, the environment, cybersecurity, and drone technology. Engineers from both companies ran workshops and mentored teams over the weekend, and on the final day, teams pitched to judges from both organisations.
AquaGuard watches for oil spills and red tides that could pollute Qatar’s desalination plants. Team YOLO put it simply: “Water purity is incredibly important to life in the Gulf region.”
Team “All you need is a Hug” came second and “Gradient Descent” third. Two other projects also earned special recognition. Qalaf compares Qatar in 1908 with today, using travel manuscripts from the Qatar National Library, and Rasad is an AI drone monitoring and tracking tool.
Over three days at M7, we saw what Qatar’s talent can achieve with the right tools, mentors and partners to catapult ideas into working prototypes. Developing talent is central to what Qai is building, and we look forward to seeing these teams take their ideas to the next level and to continue supporting the ecosystem with similar initiatives.
Asmaa Fikree, Chief Strategy Officer, Qai
For Hugging Face, which Nvidia agreed to buy for $12.9 billion in August, it was new ground. Sayak Paul, a senior researcher there, said the team was “very excited to be in this part of the world for the very first time to do an event.”
The Gulf’s talent push is getting crowded. Two days before Doha’s event began, Saudi Arabia launched the AgentX AI Hackathon in Riyadh. The communications ministry backs it, but the agency named no prize, venue, or eligibility. Qatar’s version was company-run, closed applications on 29 October, and named its winners. It follows earlier moves such as SEGA’s deal with Media City Qatar to support talent in the region.
Paul left the door open to a return: “We’ll hopefully be back for more.”
