Kakao Hosts Internal Hackathon '10K' with Vibe Coding; Participation Across All Roles Up 50%

Kakao held its internal hackathon '2025 10K' at the 'Kakao AI Campus' in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province. The event was planned to spread a development culture of experiencing high productivity in a short time using AI, and the duration was significantly reduced from the previous 24 hours to 10 hours.

Introduction of Vibe Coding and AI Judging

Kakao introduced the Vibe Coding approach for the first time in hackathon history. This method involves AI performing coding tasks via natural language commands, where participants use AI tools to repeat short development sprints in 3-hour units and implement ideas as an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). This allows projects to proceed at more than twice the speed of previous methods.

AI also participates in the judging process. An AI model evaluates the completeness of the MVP after the first sprint, and this score is reflected in the final judging results.

Expanded Participation Across All Roles

With the introduction of Vibe Coding, employees from various roles beyond developers, including planning, design, and business, participated. A total of 75 teams and approximately 250 people took part, an increase of more than 50% compared to the previous year. Kakao Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Jung Kyu-don stated that he hopes this event will serve as a starting point for everyday AI collaboration experiences as the company moves toward becoming an AI-native enterprise.