More than 100 students competed at the recent TYE Seattle Chapter Finals at Bellevue College, with a team building an AI-powered email assistant taking first place and earning a spot in a global competition next month.
The event was organized by TiE Young Entrepreneurs, a program under The Indus Entrepreneurs global network that gives students in grades 9-12 experience building companies from scratch. This year’s Seattle-area cohort included students across 20 teams, pitching ventures in industries including artificial intelligence, children’s nutrition, ocean plastic recycling, mental health and healthcare.
The TYE program has been running for more than 20 years, now encompassing more than 40 cities around the world. TYE Seattle has won the global first prize the past two years.
Before the competition, technology executives from Amazon, Microsoft and OpenAI took part in a panel discussion on navigating careers in the age of AI. Aravind Bala, co-founder and CTO of SeekOut, moderated.
- Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of agentic AI at Amazon Web Services, encouraged students to use AI as a tool for building in areas they’re passionate about, citing the acceleration in experimentation he’s seen across his teams. Sivasubramanian said that in the age of AI, “entrepreneurial skills are going to be more important than ever.”
- Vijaye Raji, chief technology officer of applications at OpenAI, urged students to adopt a “no regret” mentality, arguing that most decisions are reversible and the only way to understand an outcome is to pursue it.
- Aseem Datar, a chief product officer who leads next-generation AI and quantum computing work at Microsoft, emphasized the value of building a breadth of knowledge across disciplines as a source of high-leverage opportunity.
Five teams reached the grand finale of the competition: DuggAI, Hydrobin, Healix, NeuraKind, and Tiny Tummies.
DuggAI took first place with an AI email agent that pulls context from multiple applications to generate smarter replies, surfaced through a swipe-based interface modeled on short-form video feeds. Team members include Ashish Naik, Shaurya Duggal and Kruthik Ankam, all of Skyline High School in Sammamish, Wash.
“The bar at TYE rises every year, but this cohort raised it the most I’ve seen,” said Bala, who is also a TYE instructor. “AI has changed what a team of high schoolers can build in a few months, and these students proved it on stage.”
DuggAI will represent Seattle at the TYE Global competition, which TiE Seattle is hosting this year June 12-13 at Bellevue College. The finals are scheduled for the morning of June 13 and are open to the public.
