Future Caribbean has launched a global US$70 000 ($140 000) agentic AI ‘buildathon’ aimed at helping to create the next generation of Caribbean-born technology companies.

The initiative, which was formally launched during Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Invest Sustainability Week 2026 in Barbados, will see 40 teams from across the Caribbean and around the world competing in a 21-day sprint to build open-source Agentic AI systems designed to address challenges and opportunities facing the region.

Agentic AI refers to AI systems that can pursue goals and take actions with a degree of autonomy, rather than just answering prompts or making predictions on demand. Software “agents” can perceive a situation, reason about it, plan multi‑step workflows, call tools or other systems, act, and then reflect and adjust over time.