AUSTIN, TEXAS (Jan. 16, 2026) – The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) announces the launch of AI Hack for Freedom, an AI-powered hackathon dedicated to building tools for human rights defenders. The event will take place this weekend, Jan. 17-18, in Austin, Texas, and will be hosted by Bitcoin Park, which runs a campus in Austin dedicated to free and open-source software.
AI Hack for Freedom will bring together dissidents from Russia, Venezuela, China, and beyond who have firsthand experience with political, financial, and digital repression under authoritarian regimes. Eight activists will serve as team captains, share some of the most urgent threats and obstacles facing their movements, and deliver elevator pitches on potential tools to address them. Some of the world’s top open-source software developers will listen before pairing up to collaborate and utilize vibe coding to build solutions over two days.
The first-place team will win 0.5 BTC, the second-place team 0.25 BTC, and the third-place team 0.1 BTC, with honoraria from the remaining prize pool split equally across the remaining five captains’ causes. Winners will be announced publicly next week.
Below are the team captains participating.
Co-founder, World Liberty Congress
Leopoldo López is a Venezuelan democratic opposition leader and the former mayor of Caracas who was imprisoned by Nicolás Maduro’s regime for leading pro-democracy protests. Now free after years of wrongful detention and house arrest, he advocates for democratic reform and the use of technology like Bitcoin, Nostr, and AI to resist authoritarian repression.
Financial Director, Anti-Corruption Foundation
Anna Chekhovich is a Russian activist who works as the financial director of Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, where she uses Bitcoin to sustain the organization’s funding and operations amid repeated state crackdowns. Forced into exile by the Kremlin, Chekhovich continues to challenge Putin’s regime and teaches other nonprofits and activists to adopt Bitcoin as a defense against financial repression.
Jianli Yang
Founder, Citizen Power Initiatives for China
Jianli Yang is a Chinese pro-democracy activist who supported the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Yang was later arrested during a return to China and was imprisoned for five years for “espionage” and “illegal entry.” Now in exile in the United States, he advocates for democratic reform through his founding of Citizen Power Initiatives for China and his work as a Harvard research fellow.
Berta Valle
Nicaraguan journalist and pro-democracy activist
Berta Valle is a Nicaraguan journalist who was forced into exile after authorities harassed and confiscated assets belonging to her and her husband, former Nicaraguan presidential candidate Félix Maradiaga. From exile, Valle launched an international campaign that secured the release of Maradiaga and 221 other political prisoners. Today, she continues to support prisoners of conscience and trains activists to resist financial repression using Bitcoin.
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar
Founder and President, Ideas Beyond Borders
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar is an Iraqi human rights activist who survived the Iraq War, the murder of his brother, and several kidnapping attempts before becoming a refugee in the United States. Experiencing extremism and authoritarianism firsthand, he founded Ideas Beyond Borders, a nonprofit dedicated to equipping individuals across the Middle East with the resources to build a freer future.
Joey Siu
Spokesperson, Amnesty International Hong Kong Overseas (AIHKO)
Joey Siu is a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist who faced targeted repression for her key role in the Hong Kong protests of 2019. Although forced to flee and resettle in the United States, she continues to tirelessly advocate for human rights in Hong Kong and across the globe. In December 2023, the Hong Kong national security police issued a HK $1 million bounty on her head for “colluding with foreign forces.”
Anjan Sundaram
Journalist and author
Anjan Sundaram is an award-winning journalist and author who has reported extensively on corruption, war, and political repression, including Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Praised by BBC foreign correspondent Fergal Keane as “one of the great reporters of our age” and known for placing himself in danger to report from the ground, he exposes how modern dictatorships repress their citizens to entrench power.
Fengsuo Zhou
Executive Director, Human Rights in China
Fengsuo Zhou is a Chinese human rights activist and former student leader who helped organize the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement. After being listed as number five on the most wanted “student criminals” by the Chinese regime, he was imprisoned for a year and released following international pressure. He now leads several initiatives to promote human rights in China.
The AI tools that will be built over the coming days will respond to urgent challenges facing these activists and their communities. The hackathon will help strengthen activists’ capacity to survive in the face of repression and supercharge freedom movements around the world.
We look forward to sharing the prize-winning projects with you early next week.
