A Caribbean push to trans­form the re­gion us­ing AI tech­nol­o­gy has seen over 450 peo­ple an­swer Fu­ture Caribbean’s call to par­tic­i­pate in its Agen­tic AI Buil­dathon.

In a no­tice sent to the Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day, Fu­ture Caribbean con­firmed it had en­tered in­to the build phase of the event.

“With 450-plus builders from 39 coun­tries now de­vel­op­ing pro­duc­tion-ready Agen­tic AI so­lu­tions for re­al-world de­ploy­ment across the Caribbean and for dis­trib­uted mar­kets glob­al­ly. Ap­pli­ca­tions for the Buil­dathon opened on May 26 dur­ing IDB In­vest Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Week in Bar­ba­dos, launch­ing a glob­al ini­tia­tive to po­si­tion the Caribbean as the world’s lead­ing prov­ing ground for Agen­tic AI built for dis­trib­uted mar­kets,” the or­gan­is­ers said in a news re­lease.

The re­lease con­tin­ued, “To­day, builders are trans­form­ing ideas in­to de­ploy­able tech­nolo­gies with the sup­port of an in­ter­na­tion­al ecosys­tem of tech­nol­o­gy part­ners, ad­vis­ers, in­vestors, gov­ern­ments, de­vel­op­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions and pri­vate sec­tor lead­ers. Fu­ture Caribbean is fo­cused on re­al-world de­ploy­ment. Builders are de­vel­op­ing agen­tic so­lu­tions across dis­as­ter man­age­ment, health­care, fi­nan­cial ser­vices, tourism, lo­gis­tics, food sys­tems, dis­as­ter man­age­ment and cli­mate re­silience, en­er­gy, the blue econ­o­my, re­al es­tate, the cre­ative in­dus­tries and oth­er sec­tors, sup­port­ed by tech­nol­o­gy part­ners, po­ten­tial cus­tomers, de­ploy­ment part­ners, gov­ern­ments, cor­po­ra­tions, de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions and in­vestors.”

Last month, the Busi­ness Guardian fea­tured Fu­ture Caribbean, Lily Dash, a Bar­ba­di­an-based tech en­tre­pre­neur, lawyer, and dig­i­tal cre­ator, who ex­plained that the buil­dathon was geared to­wards bring­ing to­geth­er the Caribbean’s bright­est minds in the realm of tech­nol­o­gy to find so­lu­tions to var­i­ous key in­dus­tries across the Caribbean.

Dash said then, “In the past, it would have cost us mil­lions and mil­lions and mil­lions of dol­lars to build these sys­tems, but now we can de­sign them in a week­end and build them in a week­end for pen­nies on the dol­lar com­pared to what it would have cost be­fore. So, we are bring­ing to­geth­er a crit­i­cal mass of glob­al and re­gion­al ca­pac­i­ty.”

She ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the Caribbean had a sig­nif­i­cant tal­ent pool in tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate tech so­lu­tions at a glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive lev­el, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the fact that many peo­ple from the re­gion had se­cured ma­jor jobs at tech gi­ants around the world.

Fu­ture Caribbean con­firmed that Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad and To­ba­go led the way in terms of ap­pli­cants for the event.

The re­lease said, “Fu­ture Caribbean at­tract­ed 264 ap­pli­ca­tions from builders across 39 coun­tries, with the Caribbean it­self at the heart of the re­sponse. Ja­maica led with 41 ap­pli­ca­tions, fol­lowed by Bar­ba­dos (33) and Trinidad and To­ba­go (25), along­side strong par­tic­i­pa­tion from the Ba­hamas, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Guyana, Cu­raçao and the Cay­man Is­lands.”

It con­tin­ued, “Sig­nif­i­cant en­gage­ment al­so came from the Caribbean di­as­po­ra based in the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom and Cana­da, while ad­di­tion­al sub­mis­sions were re­ceived from coun­tries in­clud­ing In­dia, France, Nige­ria, Kenya, Sin­ga­pore, Ukraine and the Philip­pines.”

Dash said, “This is the largest plat­form of tech­nol­o­gists the Caribbean has ever as­sem­bled — a dig­i­tal fab­ric that spans the world but is Caribbean at its core, more than 800 (in­clud­ing builders, ad­vi­sors and vol­un­teers) across the re­gion, the di­as­po­ra and be­yond. Fu­ture Caribbean is very much a start­up too — we’re build­ing this plat­form along­side our builders, and we’re just get­ting start­ed.”

The Fu­ture Caribbean team ex­plained that go­ing for­ward par­tic­i­pat­ing builders will have ac­cess to hun­dreds of thou­sands of US dol­lars in cash prizes, AI in­fra­struc­ture, com­pute, soft­ware, ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­grams, strate­gic con­sult­ing and tech­ni­cal sup­port through Fu­ture Caribbean’s glob­al part­ner ecosys­tem.

Oth­er ar­eas of sup­port for the par­tic­i­pants set to be pro­vid­ed by Fu­ture Caribbean in­clude Oth­er World Com­put­ing (OWC) AI de­ploy­ment work­sta­tions val­ued at US$20,000; En­ter­prise Cay­man ac­cel­er­a­tor sup­port; a de­mil­i­tarised zone (DMZ com­put­er net­work) Soft Land­ing Pro­gram; Book­it-spon­sored trav­el for se­lect­ed founders at­tend­ing the New York In­vestor Show­case; En­ter­prise AI in­fra­struc­ture and com­pute, as well as tech­ni­cal men­tor­ship and strate­gic ad­vi­so­ry in­tro­duc­tions

Fu­ture Caribbean said, “Be­yond these re­sources, builders gain ac­cess to Fu­ture Caribbean’s com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion ecosys­tem, con­nect­ing high-po­ten­tial teams with po­ten­tial cus­tomers, de­ploy­ment part­ners, gov­ern­ments, cor­po­ra­tions, de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions, in­vestors, ven­ture cap­i­tal firms, uni­ver­si­ties and strate­gic part­ners. While the di­rect fi­nan­cial sup­port is sub­stan­tial, the great­est op­por­tu­ni­ty lies in the po­ten­tial for long-term com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, strate­gic part­ner­ships, cus­tomer adop­tion and in­vest­ment.”

The re­lease con­tin­ued, “As part of its com­mit­ment to en­tre­pre­neur­ship, EY Caribbean will pro­vide 50 hours of strate­gic con­sult­ing to se­lect­ed teams, sup­port­ing com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, scal­ing, op­er­a­tions and go-to-mar­ket strat­e­gy. Se­lect teams will al­so have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to present their so­lu­tions at the New York Stock Ex­change dur­ing an in­vestor show­case in Q3 2026, con­nect­ing founders with in­vestors, in­dus­try lead­ers, and strate­gic part­ners Glob­al Ad­vi­sors and Judges: Fu­ture Caribbean has as­sem­bled a glob­al net­work of more than 172 ad­vi­sors and judges, with new ex­perts con­tin­u­ing to join the plat­form.”

Fu­ture Caribbean ex­plained its net­work in­clud­ed founders, in­vestors, tech­nol­o­gists, re­searchers, cor­po­rate lead­ers and pub­lic sec­tor ex­perts whose ex­pe­ri­ence spans ven­ture cap­i­tal, glob­al tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions, gov­ern­ments, uni­ver­si­ties and the Caribbean pri­vate sec­tor.

They said this al­so would grant par­tic­i­pants ac­cess to in­di­vid­u­als with ex­pe­ri­ence from or­gan­i­sa­tions such as IDB In­vest and the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP).

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said, “Through­out the Buil­dathon, par­tic­i­pat­ing teams will have di­rect ac­cess to Fu­ture Caribbean’s glob­al net­work of ad­vi­sors, judges and tech­nol­o­gy part­ners through a se­ries of tech­ni­cal work­shops, strat­e­gy ses­sions and of­fice hours host­ed on TapIn. Founders will re­ceive guid­ance on prod­uct de­vel­op­ment, tech­ni­cal ar­chi­tec­ture, com­mer­cial­iza­tion, fundrais­ing, go-to-mar­ket strat­e­gy and re­al-world de­ploy­ment, with many ad­vi­sors mak­ing them­selves avail­able through re­cur­ring of­fice hours through­out the pro­gram. As new Agen­tic AI mod­els, tools and ca­pa­bil­i­ties con­tin­ue to be re­leased at an un­prece­dent­ed pace, this col­lab­o­ra­tive dig­i­tal work­space en­ables builders to learn, it­er­ate and re­fine their prod­ucts along­side ex­pe­ri­enced founders, en­gi­neers, in­vestors and do­main ex­perts.”

No­tably, since Dash an­nounced the Agen­tic buil­dathon and its aim to cre­ate tech so­lu­tions to ad­dress short­com­ings in key re­gion­al in­dus­tries such as tourism, agri­cul­ture as well as dis­as­ter re­sponse and cli­mate change mech­a­nisms, Gre­go­ry Fer­nan­dez in­tro­duced his new com­pa­ny, In­tel­li­co AI Agency Lim­it­ed, an Agen­tic AI com­pa­ny which has sim­i­lar plans to ad­dress those is­sues.

Fer­nan­dez said In­tel­li­co is set to un­veil its soft­ware lat­er this month.