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Waddle Wins 1st Place at the OpenAI GPT-5 Hackathon 2025

Waddle won first place among 93 global teams at the OpenAI GPT-5 Hackathon by showcasing a GPT-5-powered digital clone and sales strategy simulation system for ecommerce.

Cobb | CEO, Gentoo
Waddle Wins First Place at the OpenAI GPT-5 Hackathon

Waddle won first place among 93 teams at the OpenAI GPT-5 Hackathon in San Francisco on August 9–10, 2025. The team presented a GPT-5-powered digital-clone and sales-strategy simulation project.

OpenAI and Cerebral Valley hosted the event after the release of GPT-5. Waddle received $50,000 in OpenAI credits and invitations to OpenAI DevDay. The 2025 DevDay announcement set the conference for October 6, 2025, at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

The team and the 2025 hackathon project

Led by CEO Jihyuk Park, the four-member Waddle team, including engineers Jintae Song, Sangdo Han, and Taebaek Hwang, traveled from Seoul to San Francisco to develop a GPT-5-powered digital clone generation and sales strategy simulation system for online store visitors.

Using conversation data between the AI shopping agent Gentoo and users, the team built a system that generates digital clones of online shoppers and simulates the performance of sales strategies involving new product launches, promotional campaigns, and coupon offers. The project received the highest evaluation from a judging panel composed of representatives from OpenAI and leading global venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Conviction.

Jihyuk Park, CEO of Waddle, said, “Building a polished product and bringing our idea to life in such a short period of time demonstrates both our team’s execution capability and the scalability of our technology. Through our collaboration with OpenAI, we will continue expanding Gentoo across global ecommerce platforms and transform the online shopping experience.”

Related Articles Waddle’s GPT-5 Hackathon Win Showcases Korean AI Competitiveness on the Global Stage

This announcement describes the team’s 2025 hackathon project. For Gentoo’s current store-growth work, see the Shopify optimization guide.

Read the earlier 2024 Most AGI Potential Award announcement for the shopping-agent work presented at that event. Each announcement describes its own project and date.

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