An engineering undergraduate student returned home from Cambridge, Massachusetts with a $50,000 grand prize after his team claimed top honours at HARD MODE, an invite-only hardware and artificial intelligence hackathon hosted by MIT Media Lab, this month.
Cristiano Da Silva, a Mechanical Engineering student, was part of Dreaming Objects, the winning team at the March 2026 event. The competition drew 200 participants — roughly 40 teams — from engineering, computer science, and design programs across North America. Hosted by MIT Media Lab's AHA and the Design Intelligence Lab, HARD MODE challenges participants to build physical, AI-integrated prototypes in 48 hours: real hardware that senses, adapts, and responds to people.
Dreaming Objects captured the jury's attention with a vision for a future where artificial intelligence lives not in screens or chat interfaces, but in the everyday objects around us. The team set out to stress-test intelligence in the physical world — imagining objects that anyone can own, interact with, and grow alongside in real life.
The grand prize is a $50,000 investment from MIT's E14 Fund, designed to help the team turn their concept into a real startup.