National AI Champion First Final: Three Days at KINTEX

2026-11-05Our Journey

Our Journey is a short, photo-led series about the places the H1R.ai team has been.

From November 3 to 5, 2026, the first final round of the 2026 National AI Champion competition was held at KINTEX in Ilsan. In a competition that started with 100 teams, the String team reached the general-track final and ran booth C-06 for three days.

String booth C-06 at the KINTEX first final

The booth had one message: "Focus on your app. Croche takes care of the AI." When the ten judges visited, we presented and demoed in person. We sent the same request to an app built with Croche and one built by hand and compared the answers and costs side by side, and showed Croche Studio evaluating an app with virtual users. Apps that hackathon teams built in 2 days were there for visitors to try.

Explaining a demo at the booth

We could show everything from String to Croche in one place: an open-source AI OS, a Spotlight at the NeurIPS 2026 AgenticOS Workshop, 10 patent applications, and real apps proven at the hackathon.

Team String with Prof. Nojun Kwak, Vice Director of the SNU AI Institute

Thank you to everyone who stopped by over those three days. We'll keep recording the next steps of the journey here.