Nov 10, 2025 - News

Here are the winning pitches from a CU Boulder and Google hackathon

Mitchell Byars

A large diverse group of people sitting in a conference room smiling and waving, with Google host Brin Enterkin and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis smiling close to the camera at the front. — Google host Brin Enterkin and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis at the Colorado Impact Hackathon. Photo: Courtesy of Google

Google partnered with the University of Colorado and the Colorado Energy Office to host the first-ever Colorado Impact Hackathon last week.

The big picture: The event brought 70 students from the CU Leeds School of Business to the Google Boulder campus to "hack" four energy challenges.

The winning pitches were:

First place: An online marketplace for EV chargers that incentivizes individual hosts to turn their private chargers into a public network.
Second place: A streamlined holistic app for homeowners to navigate energy upgrades.
Third place: A creative business model for expanding EV access.

State of play: The challenges, provided by the Colorado Energy Office, covered climate workforce shortages, electric vehicle adoption, rural electric-vehicle charging infrastructure, and incentivizing home-energy upgrades.

Google officials did not say whether any of the winning ideas might get support to actually launch.

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Here are the winning pitches from a CU Boulder and Google hackathon

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