[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] Global AI data cloud company Snowflake held the final round of its Snowflake AI & Data Hackathon 2026 on April 29, implementing ideas using data on the Snowflake platform.

The event, which began on March 17, went through a month-long development period. It selected 3 teams each for the business and tech tracks, for a total of 6 teams, and determined rankings in the final round on April 29.

The company said it added a business track this year and that more than 500 people took part, including data scientists, engineers and developers as well as business staff and planners with no app development experience.

In the tech track, participants developed AI apps using real data, the company said. In the business track, they presented data-based business ideas and solutions to problems.

Team Chaos, which won first place in the business track, introduced an AI commercial-district analysis service called "Sangkwon". It integrates scattered commercial-district data such as floating population, card sales and income, and applies a predictive model based on the LightGBM machine-learning model to forecast not only currently promising districts but also districts expected to rise in 6 months. The first-place team in the tech track, "Every Moment of Yours," developed an AI sales strategy platform called "Jeongjeongdangdang" that combines a Cortex retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)-based multi-agent with external data to improve on-site sales strategies and call conversion rates in real time.

Judging was handled by Jin-sik Lim, head of solution engineering at Snowflake Korea, and executives including data and AI experts from Richgo, SPH, Ajeongdang, LG Uplus and Naver Webtoon. They comprehensively evaluated how technology was used, the completeness of service implementation through combining data and AI, and compliance with security and data governance.

Soo-hyun Lee, a Snowflake tech evangelist, said, "The teams that participated in this hackathon commonly implemented AI applications that solve on-the-ground problems based on real data." Lee added, "Snowflake plans to continue supporting customers and partners through various programs to expand the domestic data and AI ecosystem."