Future Caribbean launches global Agentic AI buildathon to position Caribbean as AI innovation hub

As Agentic AI emerges as one of the most important technological shifts since the rise of the internet, Future Caribbean is building what it believes is the world’s first Global Agentic AI Buildathon designed around an entire region. The initiative brings together builders, deployment partners, investors, advisors and institutions to develop Agentic AI systems for real economies operating across islands, jurisdictions, currencies, markets and industries.

Founded by Lily Dash, a Barbadian lawyer, entrepreneur and technologist, Future Caribbean brings together builders, researchers, investors, universities, corporations, governments and institutions to explore how Agentic AI can help fragmented markets operate, coordinate and compete at global scale.

Growing up and living in Barbados, Dash sees a region rich with world-class talent across tourism, finance, culture, sport, entrepreneurship and technology, yet often constrained by fragmentation across markets, institutions and jurisdictions. After more than fifteen years building technology-enabled businesses, she has come to know that innovation is transformation, and that Agentic AI presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand capacity, compress time and unlock new forms of economic coordination across distributed markets.

Built from a conviction that the Caribbean has far more talent, capacity and global relevance than its current systems allow the world to see, Future Caribbean is a federated coalition bringing together talent, capital, compute, advisors, deployment partners and domain expertise to build category-defining companies, accelerate digital transformation and weave the digital fabric for a Caribbean ready to move as one.

This initiative comes amid explosive growth in the Agentic AI ecosystem. OpenClaw, one of the most prominent open-source Agentic AI projects, became one of the fastest-growing open-source repositories in GitHub history, surpassing 100,000 GitHub stars within weeks of launch and growing to more than 350,000 stars within months. Today, a rapidly expanding ecosystem of developers, companies and open-source contributors is building autonomous agents, skills and workflows across thousands of real-world use cases.

While much of the AI conversation has focused on productivity tools and chatbots, Future Caribbean is focused on a larger question:

Can Agentic AI become the operating layer that helps fragmented regions operate as frictionlessly as one?

Most of the world’s economies are distributed markets. Across Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Pacific Islands, Europe, the Gulf, North America and the Caribbean, economic activity is fragmented across jurisdictions, currencies, regulations, legal systems, languages, institutions and datasets.

The Caribbean represents one of the clearest examples. Multiple islands, multiple currencies, multiple legal systems and multiple languages create barriers to coordination despite shared industries, common challenges and significant economic opportunity.

“Coordination across fragmented markets has been costly, complex and difficult to scale, cutting regions of the world off from themselves and off from global markets,” said Lily Dash, Future Caribbean founder. “Agentic AI creates the possibility of coordinating across that complexity in ways that simply weren’t possible before. The Caribbean provides a powerful proving ground for solutions that could ultimately be deployed across distributed markets worldwide.”

Presenting Partner IDB Invest brings the scale of one of the region’s leading development finance institutions, with members across 45+ countries and billions deployed annually to accelerate private and public sector growth across Latin America and the Caribbean.

“Future Caribbean reflects the kind of collaboration that is needed to accelerate innovation across the region. By bringing together entrepreneurs, technology leaders, investors, institutions and development partners, the initiative creates new opportunities for talent, ideas and technologies to move from concept to deployment and scale. We are pleased to have supported the launch of this effort through IDB Invest Sustainability Week.”

— Leonardo Mazzei, Chief of the Connectivity, Markets and Finance Division, IDB Invest

That ambition is shared at the regional level.

“Future Caribbean is a bold and timely initiative that showcases the Caribbean’s potential to lead in innovation and emerging technologies. By connecting regional talent with global expertise, investment, and AI tools, it creates new opportunities for economic transformation and sustainable development. The OECS strongly supports this effort and encourages broad participation from across our region.”

— Dr Didacus Jules, Director General, Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS)

The 21-day buildathon will bring together 40 teams from around the world and provide access to:

• H200-class compute infrastructure
• Open-source Agentic AI frameworks
• Global mentors and advisors
• Real-world deployment opportunities
• Corporate, government, academic and institutional partners
• Investor exposure and ecosystem support

Participants will focus on solutions that can drive economic development, modernize government services, improve cross-border commerce, increase workforce productivity, streamline institutional operations and unlock new opportunities for regional collaboration.

Select teams will receive cash awards, a live pitch opportunity at the New York Stock Exchange in Q4 2026, GPU credits from Highrise & Impala AI, Minimax AI and Shogo AI, deployment machines from Other World Computing, scholarships to DMZ Ventures’ technology incubator through Enterprise Cayman, and access to a global network of founders, investors, operators and ecosystem partners including ACTAI Advisors. 

Bill Tai, a legendary venture capitalist known for writing the first check into Zoom, seeding Canva and backing more than 20 startups that grew to become public companies over a 35-year career, believes Agentic AI has the potential to reshape how economies operate.

“No other buildathon can give you this kind of traction if you can build something that finds real product-market fit,” said Tai.

“What we’re seeing with Agentic AI is unlike anything I can remember. The pace of innovation, adoption and developer participation is extraordinary,” said Tai. “For the first time, we have technology that can help coordinate across complexity at a scale that was previously impossible. The potential impact on economic development, productivity and human opportunity is enormous.”

As Founder and Chairman of ACTAI Global, a nonprofit organization focused on ocean conservation and economic empowerment through entrepreneurship with more than 5,000 entrepreneurs, investors, innovators and change-makers, Tai helped inspire the vision for Future Caribbean and mobilized the ACTAI ecosystem to support the initiative through mentors, partners, sponsors, judges, prizes and global participation.

Teams will build with world-class advisors from regional institutions, Caribbean private sector leaders, global technology companies, universities, investors and deployment partners — testing Agentic AI systems against real conditions across islands, jurisdictions, currencies, industries and markets.

“If it can work in the Caribbean, it can work anywhere,” said Dash. “The goal is to show how Agentic AI can create measurable economic impact across complex, distributed environments — digitally connecting and transforming a region of the world, while building the next category-defining companies at the same time.”

Since launch, the Future Caribbean community has grown rapidly, with participation doubling week by week as builders, advisors, investors, judges, institutions and deployment partners join from across the Caribbean and around the world. More than 60 judges and advisors have already signed up to support teams, while a growing number of volunteers have stepped forward to contribute their time, expertise, networks and operational support. Through the initiative’s Get Involved page, advisors, investors, judges, volunteers and prospective partners can apply to participate, support teams and contribute to what organizers hope will become a new model for regional innovation and collaboration in the age of Agentic AI.

As one recent Founding 100 applicant wrote, “Because I want to help shape a region that shaped me.” That spirit has echoed across Future Caribbean, with Caribbean people at home and across the diaspora joined by builders, investors, researchers, entrepreneurs and institutions from around the world. Together, they are helping build the networks, partnerships and momentum needed to accelerate innovation across the region and create the conditions for the next generation of global category-defining companies to emerge from the Caribbean — in service of the region and other distributed markets worldwide.

The initiative was announced in connection with the annual Sustainability Week Meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank, hosted by Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados.