Madrid Open
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Madrid Open · Vol.1 · Saturday 3 October 2026 · 9AM to 9PM

Three companies open the challenge nobody has cracked yet.

Forty people in one room, twelve hours, three challenges that matter far beyond the day. Real data, real stakes, and the person who owns the challenge sitting next to you.

Each company already runs its system in production. What they bring here is the frontier: the part nobody has cracked, and the number they would trust it against.

Register on Luma40 seats · Closes 25 Sept
Presented byTalkyReversaTunenHosted byMad Tech Campus

01 · What it is

A one day open on three frontier problems.

We give you a company’s real data, the people who built the system, and the number to beat. At 21:00 your system runs live and the number decides.

Real data

You get their real data.

Not a demo file. The same data they work with every day.

Real people

You ask the people who built it.

They present at 09:00 and stay in the room until the demos.

Real score

You are scored on one number.

Agreed before you start, measured on data your system has never seen.

02 · Who is it for

You are the right person if…

Forty seats, teams of three. We read every registration and select for evidence that you finish things, not for the best CV in Madrid.

  • 01

    You handle ambiguity

    Nobody will tell you where the answer is, or whether there is one.

  • 02

    You like tough challenges

    The harder the question, the more you want it.

  • 03

    You deliver under pressure

    Twelve hours, one clock, something that runs at the end of it.

  • 04

    You build for the love of it

    Building things is what you would be doing on a Saturday anyway.

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Caspar David Friedrich, 1818
Caspar David Friedrich · Wanderer above the Sea of Fog · 1818

03 · Who organizes it

Three founders who kept showing up on Saturdays.

We met at Google for Startups, working on complicated problems, and the weekends were where the real progress happened. Those Saturdays are how we got to know each other, and the relationship between Talky, Reversa and Tunen came out of them.

This painting is us. A problem in front of you, a horizon full of adventure, and no visible path between the two. You can see the shape of it, you cannot see the way through, and you go anyway.

So we are opening our fog to forty people, to find out what happens when a room full of builders spends one Saturday on the questions we cannot answer alone. Some of them will end up building with us. That would be a good day.

Talky

AI for accounting teams and firms, with every output tied back to the document it came from.

usetalky.com

Reversa

The operating system for regulation: a live digital twin of legislative activity, from the moment a text moves to the obligation it lands on a team.

reversa.ai

Tunen

The AI and data engine for agriculture, turning field operations into datasets others can trust.

tunen.ai

Hosted byMad Tech CampusMadrid, the venue for the day.Sponsored bymad.builders

04 · The challenges to pick

Three questions still open.

Pick one when you register. How you get there is entirely yours: the brief states the question, the data and the metric, and nothing about the method. Briefs go out the week before; the data credits are handed out during the event.

Track 01TalkyAccountingMore about Talky

Close the year, alone.

Can a machine close a full financial year for a company the size of an IBEX 35 group, with no accountant in the loop?

You get one company’s entire year exactly as it arrived, across formats, languages and currencies. Buried in it are the things a good accountant would catch, and nobody will tell you where they are. The prize is the boldest claim in finance: a year that closes itself and holds up to audit.

The metric

How much of the year closes with no human, at 99% precision.

Approving something wrong costs more than flagging it. Escalating everything does not win either.

Track 02ReversaDemocracyMore about Reversa

Read a democracy in real time.

Parliament speaks all day and the official record lands weeks later. Can a country know what was said, and who said it, minutes after a session ends?

The people in that room decide the lives of millions. A sentence spoken there becomes a tax, a licence, a border, a right. It should not take weeks to reach the people it applies to.

You inherit a live pipeline that already works on real sessions of two parliamentary chambers around the world, and the freedom to take it wherever it needs to go. Get this right and everything a democracy says is captured and usable the same day, in every official language.

The metric

How fast the transcript is ready, and how often the right speaker is named.

Measured on real transcripts.

Track 03TunenAgricultureMore about Tunen

Building the future of farming.

We give you the plot; you resolve its reality to predict the future. Can your system reflect the reality at a resolution worth acting on?

The environment decides what a field can yield, and a lot of the necessary data is available online: satellites, weather, soil maps, topography… but never in one place.

Reconcile different sources into six layers a farmer can read, including your own yield potential map, refreshed unattended every 14 days. Different projections, different resolutions, a different portal in every country, and field edges that quietly corrupt every statistic you compute — you wanted a challenge!

The metric

How close does your model come to the reality we hold back?

How it is judged

Knowing when not to answer is part of the score.

Result against the track metric45%
Safe autonomy and restraint20%
Auditability of every answer15%
Would it ship: cost, latency, security10%
Ambition and live demo10%

05 · Timeline

One Saturday.
Twelve hours.

Mad Tech Campus, Madrid. A half hour presentation, eleven hours of build, and demos at 21:00. Food, coffee and power all day. Bring a laptop and whatever stack you are fastest in.

Teams of three, formed as people register, so you arrive knowing who you are building with.

Week beforeBriefs and material to read in advance, so you can design as much as you want before the day.
09:00Doors, coffee, and a thirty minute presentation of the three challenges by the people who own them, where the objectives are set out in full. The test starts here.
09:30Full datasets released. Build starts. The owners stay in the room.
14:00Lunch, without stopping the clock.
17:00Public checkpoint. Every team shows where it stands.
20:45Code freeze.
21:00Demos. Every system runs live against data it has never seen, and results are read out in the room.

06 · Rewards

Top three per track, and a way in.

Prizes

Each of Talky, Reversa and Tunen sets its own prize for the top three teams on its challenge, announced with the brief.

Credits

Credits from our technology providers, handed out during the event.

Working together

Three founding teams in the room, hiring. The best work turns into a conversation about doing it for real.

Questions

Before you register.

Do I need domain knowledge?

No. The briefs assume you have none, and the owners are in the room all day to answer.

How do teams work?

Teams of three, formed as people register, so you know your team before the day. Register together if you already have one.

What language is it in?

English and Spanish, both fine, for registering, the room and the demo.

Can I start before the day?

Yes. Briefs go out the week before, so you can design as much as you want ahead of time. The data credits are not sent in advance, and the test itself starts at 09:00 on the day.

What do I bring?

A laptop. Any stack, any model, any framework. Whatever you are fastest in.

Is the data real?

Real in structure and difficulty, prepared so no customer information is exposed. Public sources are used as they are.

One of forty seats, 3 October.

Registration happens on Luma. Closes 25 September 2026, and we reply to everyone.

Register on Luma

Mad Tech Campus · Madrid · 9AM to 9PM

Madrid Open (Vol.1) · 3 October 2026Talky · Reversa · Tunen · Mad Tech Campus