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The Engine Room - New Launch! 🚀

Author

Jamesin Seidel
October 14, 2025

We’re launching something new from AI Engine.

Over the past year, AI Engine has grown from a scrappy hackathon idea into one of the most exciting builder communities in Europe -

200-person events, incredible energy, world-class sponsors, and some of the best early-stage technical talent we've met.

Now, we’re launching something new!!

🚀 It’s called The Engine Room — a one-week sprint where 8 teams will get £5,000 to test ideas and take a real shot at the company concepts they’ve been thinking about, but haven’t yet had the time or space to build.

Why We’re Doing This

We’re launching The Engine Room for two reasons:

First, we’re seeing incredible technical talent coming out of Europe - maybe more than ever before - and this is our way of helping that momentum turn into companies.

Second, we’re excited to keep building this community. AI Engine started as a weekend hackathon - but it’s grown into something more. This is a chance to bring together a tight-knit group of engineers, researchers, and hackers who are starting companies or want to join startups early.

We want to create the space - and give the backing - to help those people take the next step.

Let’s go!!! First cohort starts in November. 🔥

Program Overview

Before we get into the backstory or “why us,” here’s what you actually need to know:

  • 🗓️ Dates: November 10–14, 2025

  • 📍 Location: In-person @ Dawn Capital, London (teams expected ~80% in person)

  • 💸 Investment: £5,000 per team (no equity, no strings)

  • 👥 Cohort Size: 8 teams

  • 🎤 Demo Day: December 1st, 2025

  • 🌐 Website: engineroom.run

  • ✍️ Apply here: Google Form

The Backstory

Over the past year, Zoe Qin (Dawn Capital) and I (Jamesin Seidel, Chapter One) have been running AI Engine hackathons.

We’re both technical. We love writing code. And we wanted to build the kind of event we’d actually want to attend.

Now, with The Engine Room, we’re turning that energy into a structured sprint - with capital, mentorship, and a community that goes beyond a weekend.

The team behind it:

  • I’ve shipped software to over 300 million people as a technical lead at Twitter, and before that, I was a professional sports bettor.

  • Zoe was an algorithmic trader before joining Dawn (how cool is that?) and studied Physics at Cambridge.

  • Jeff Morris Jr. (Chapter One) is helping us lead the program. He ran Tinder’s revenue team from $20M to $1.2B and grew up in Menlo Park — he’s been deep in the product scene since day one.

Between the three of us - and the network we’re pulling together - we’re bringing real product and technical experience to support whatever you're building.

Why You?

It feels like something big is happening in European tech - and we want to support the people at the center of it.

We have ElevenLabs, who has built a team of absolute monster engineers, Granola, shipping the most beautiful product anyone has ever seen, and Lovable hitting all-time highs on growth and revenue.

DeepMind spin-outs, Nvidia pledging $2b in UK and broader European AI startups, Larry Ellison investing $1b in Oxford, Project Europe, BVNK getting acquired for $2 billion, Klarna IPO-ing, and of course, the Unicorn Mafia, a WhatsApp group that everyone is trying to get into.

It’s a fun time to be here.

This kind of program already exists in the U.S. (think Z Fellows), but no one’s built one for Europe. It’s time.

Who It’s For

We want to work with people who feel this energy - and are ready to build.

  • PhDs, researchers, and deep tech builders with ideas they want to take commercial

  • Undergrads, recent grads, and early-career engineers already shipping side projects

  • Engineers at big tech companies (Google, DeepMind, Palantir, etc.) looking to build outside their day jobs

  • Second-time (or second-attempt) founders ready to sprint on a new idea

  • Builders without a fully formed idea yet — but ready to take the first step

  • Engineers and hackers already plugged into the European startup scene who want to meet collaborators, mentors, and early backers

Mentors, Partners & Perks

We’ve pulled together a killer lineup of mentors and partners.

You’ll get direct advice and support from people who’ve built and scaled products at: ElevenLabs, AWS, DeepMind, Anthropic, Coinbase, and many more. Plus top European founders such as Tim Chong, Thomas Paul Mann, Daniel Reid Cahn, and Reuben Steenkamp.

And each team in The Engine Room will receive over £10,000 in credits and tools:

  • £5,000 in AWS credits

  • 12 months of ElevenLabs Pro

  • 6 months of Linear for free

  • 6 months of Framer (Launch Plan)

  • + more in discussions from our partner network

The Engine Room – First Cohort

We’re so excited to finally launch this.

If you’ve been to an AI Engine event and left thinking, how do I scale - this is that next step.

🧠 Apply now: https://www.engineroom.run
📬 Or send this to someone who should be building something right now.

Support the post on LinkedIn! Link Here

And join our new Discord community: Link here

Let’s do this 🔥 🔥