Zalo AI Challenge 2025 Arena kicks off, prize over 300 million

First held in 2018, Zalo AI Challenge attracts thousands of teams each year. Zalo AI Challenge 2025 has a total prize value of up to 12,000 USD , equivalent to more than 300 million VND. The competition officially opened for registration on October 27 and the submission deadline ended on November 20.

In the context of AI continuing to be heavily invested in Vietnam, the return of the Zalo AI Challenge arena continues to affirm Zalo's commitment to accompanying the country in developing AI resources, contributing to the building of AI sovereignty . The Zalo AI Challenge not only brings valuable cash prizes to contestants, but also opens up a space to promote learning and exchange of experiences in AI development in Vietnam.

This year's Zalo AI Challenge conveys the message "AI as an efficient partner" - "AI is a trustworthy partner". Artificial intelligence is increasingly being invested in with many practical applications in human life in many aspects, from personal life to work. Not just a tool, AI has become a trustworthy "partner", helping each person work more effectively, creatively and breakthrough.

Zalo AI Challenge 2025 has a total prize of up to 12,000 USD , equivalent to more than 300 million VND.

Two exam questions with high practical application

The message “AI as an efficient partner” is conveyed directly through two highly practical exams in Vietnam: AeroEyes - Finding and Rescuing with AI-Powered Drones and RoadBuddy - Understanding the Road through Dashcam AI.

The contest “AeroEyes - Finding and Rescuing with AI-Powered Drones” has great social value when applying autonomous drone technology in emergency situations and disaster response, helping to search for missing people or important objects in harsh environments such as flooded areas, dense forests, and storm-damaged areas.

In the context of increasingly severe natural disasters and floods due to climate change, AI technology is becoming a frontline force in rescue and emergency response. Combining AI with drone systems has opened up a breakthrough: The "divine eyes" in the air can scan dozens of square kilometers in just a few minutes, analyzing images in real time to detect people in distress, deep flooded areas or cut-off routes. Instead of relying on manual observation in harsh conditions, AI helps rescue forces determine locations more accurately, optimize resources and significantly shorten response times.

With the topic “AeroEyes - Finding and Rescuing with AI-Powered Drones”, the teams will build an algorithm to control the drone to perform a specific task in a real environment from images recorded by the drone, simulating a real -world search and rescue mission.

Traffic is an urgent issue in today's society. With the complex traffic situation and increasing vehicle density, AI technology supports safer driving. Through the ability to understand and analyze images from dash cams, AI systems can quickly recognize signs, traffic lights and dangerous situations. This not only helps reduce accidents due to lack of concentration, but also supports compliance with traffic laws, especially in urban environments with high traffic density such as Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City.

The “RoadBuddy - Understanding the Road through Dashcam AI” challenge aims to build a driving assistant that can understand video content from dashcams to quickly answer questions related to traffic signs, signals and driving instructions.

Two groups of Zalo AI Challenge 2025.

Unlocking the Artificial Intelligence Potential of Young Vietnamese

Zalo AI Challenge has chosen the Kaggle format for the competition and has maintained it for 7 times. During the competition, the competing teams will continuously update their model results on the Leaderboard so that the competing teams can directly monitor each other's training process in real-time. At the same time, after the competition ends, Zalo AI always encourages the competing teams to share their solutions with the AI community within the framework of Zalo AI Summit or on Vietnamese technology forums.

With highly practical AI topics, through prizes up to 12,000 USD and quality training data sets, Zalo hopes that students and small research groups can access the necessary resources and have more motivation to develop AI models. The organizers hope that the largest AI arena in Vietnam will promote the development of the Vietnamese AI community, not only limited to large companies with great potential but also expanding to the younger generation.

Dr. Chau Thanh Duc, Deputy Organizing Committee of the competition, Director of Research & Development at Zalo AI, shared: “In the world, artificial intelligence is developing at an extraordinary speed and increasingly has a profound impact on work and life. Vietnam has great potential to rise in this field, thanks to a talented young team in STEM industries. However, we still lack the necessary leadership and connection to fully exploit that potential."

Dr. Duc emphasized: "Zalo AI Challenge is organized to introduce to the Vietnamese AI community the latest trends in the world through highly applicable and practical problems. The competition is not only a playground for young people to challenge themselves, but also a place to connect AI enthusiasts, together promoting cooperation and developing the Vietnamese AI community."

Organizing Committee of Zalo AI Challenge 2025.

In addition to senior staff at Zalo AI, contestants also received advice from leading AI experts, including: Dr. Chau Thanh Duc - Director of Research & Development, Zalo AI; Dr. Nguyen Truong Son - Director of Science, Zalo AI; Professor Nguyen Le Minh - Head of the Machine Learning and Natural Language Understanding Laboratory, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST); Professor Tran Thanh Long - Deputy Dean, Director of Research, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, UK; Dr. Tran Minh Quan - Senior Technology Development Expert, NVIDIA; Dr. Luong Viet Quoc - CEO of Realtime Robotics.

Zalo AI Challenge 2025 Advisory Board.

During the competition, the results of the teams will be made public on the Leaderboard at the website challenge.zalo.ai. After that, the models of the competing teams will be tested on a different dataset from the initial training data and the final results of the competition will be calculated based on the model results on this dataset. Zalo AI Challenge 2025 promises to continue to be a launching pad for young Vietnamese talents, contributing to spreading the spirit of innovation and affirming Vietnam's position on the global artificial intelligence map.

Source: https://znews.vn/dau-truong-ai-lon-nhat-viet-nam-voi-giai-thuong-usd-12-000-post1597302.html