Announcing Winners of the Square + Google Cloud AI Hackathon

Two months ago, Square and Google Cloud came together to foster AI innovation for sellers by supporting developers building with Google Cloud’s AI APIs and Square’s APIs. Over that period, almost 2,500 developers came together to build impactful solutions and compete for $100,000 in prizes. While there were many innovative and well-executed submissions that aimed to revolutionize payment systems, transform customer experiences, and even pioneer an entirely new realm of business solutions, we were forced to pick a few winners.

In addition to first and second place overall, we also awarded prizes for the following categories:

• Best reinvention or unification of in-person and online experiences
• Best use of a text or chat foundational model
• Best use of image/audio model or combination of multiple modalities
• Most potential for positive change
• Best use of 1 or more of the following Square APIs: Terminal API, Subscriptions API, Invoices API
• Most impressive technical implementation
• Most valuable feedback

Submissions were judged on the following criteria:

• Quality of the idea: Includes creativity and originality of the idea
• Implementation of the idea: Includes how well the idea was executed by the developer.
• Potential value to businesses: Includes the extent to which the app can help businesses grow.
• Integrative experience: Includes how well the app integrates the in-person and virtual experiences.
• Potential community impact: Includes how impactful the app will be as a driver for positive change within the community.

Drumroll please…. the following describes the winning ideas for each category. Thank you to all who participated and submitted projects! Congrats to the developers behind these winning projects!

First Place Overall: SquareSense AI ($22,000)

SquareSense AI - Personalized Ecommerce Intelligence

Check out the SquareSense AI demo video!

Team: Younes Laaroussi

SquareSense AI seamlessly integrates cutting-edge AI with Square to empower businesses by providing AI-driven insights, enhanced accessibility, and deeper customer engagement. Leveraging Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, this application offers recommendations for product listing optimization (for SEO and otherwise), creates customizable and interactive charts, and provides easier access to business insights.

Second Place Overall: Aisle ($18,000)

Aisle - Visionary POS

Team: Ryan May, Betsy Berger, David Le, Yemi Fakorede, Terry Price

Aisle serves to streamline the in-person checkout process by removing the friction of scanning item barcodes. With Aisle, users can use the webcam on their laptop, tablet, or phone to automatically identify a business’s most frequently sold products. During checkout, the user simply presents the product to the webcam from any angle, and it's instantly added to their order without the need to scan. Give the webcam a thumbs-up 👍, and the order is transmitted to the Square Terminal credit card reader, eliminating the need for any physical interaction with the point of sale.

Best reinvention or unification of in-person and online experiences: SquareCubed ($15,000)

SquareCubed

Team: Ankur Singh and Palash Bansal

SquareCubed is an AI assisted virtual showroom experience for online sites and in-store kiosks that integrates AI and photorealistic 3D rendering into Square Online stores. With the aid of Google’s PaLM 2 AI, store owners can immerse their customers in a tailored, interactive shopping experience while engaging in real-time conversations with AI.

Best use of a text or chat foundational model: PayAssist ($10,000)

PayAssist

Team: Ahmad Nurfadilah

PayAssist enables Square sellers to effortlessly create no-code “smart shopping assistants” in the form of chat bots to answer customer queries, provide product recommendations, or just enhance the overall shopping experience for retail-based businesses.

Best use of image/audio model or combination of multiple modalities: Snap Cart ($10,000)

Snap Cart

Team: Luke Roumy, Aidan Ouckama, Alex D’Agostino, Charles Canata, Steven Shu

Snap Cart supports small businesses by reducing the need for barcodes on products. With Snapcart, customers simply need to show a product to the camera, and press “add to cart” once the AI recognizes it. Snap Cart's intelligent image recognition technology identifies the product almost instantly, streamlining the checkout process and eliminating the need for barcode scanning or manual input.

Most potential for positive change: Elara ($7,500)

Elara

Team: Tariku Tessema

Elara uses customer shopping cart data and machine learning to allow businesses to easily implement non-profit matching at the point of sale, making it easier to give donations. This offers several advantages, including fostering a stronger bond and loyalty between merchants and their customers.

Best use of 1 or more of the following Square APIs: Terminal API, Subscriptions API, Invoices API: Seller AI ($7,500)

Seller AI

Team: Ankur Verma, Kisha Aggarwal, Himanshu Garg, Pawan Jain

Seller AI is a restaurant management system that helps chefs and restaurant owners manage their inventory, menu, finances, customers, and more, based on the ingredients in their inventory. This suite of tools is powered by Google’s Vertex AI to create custom solutions for each individual restaurant.

Most Impressive Technical Implementation: GetFeed ($5,000)

GetFeed

Team: Ahmad Rifai

GetFeed uses AI to streamline the management and analysis of customer feedback. Sellers can collect feedback seamlessly through customizable widgets integrated with Square Online or other websites and GetFeed analyzes the feedback to provide summarized insights, sentiment analysis, and top keywords.

Most Valuable Feedback ($1,000)

A special thanks to Hong Tran, Narayan Das, Aman Bansod, Godwin Pinto, and Sameer Kashyap for providing valuable feedback during the building process. We always look forward to hearing from our community, so if you want to offer feedback at any time please head to the Square Developer Forums.

Congratulations again to all the winners and thank you to all participants for your submissions! You can head on over to the submissions gallery to check out all the projects that were submitted. Stay connected to us by joining the Square Developer Discord for announcements about future Square-hosted hackathons, or just to stay in the loop with what’s new from Square Developer.