Core Cognitive, a startup incubated at National Incubation Center Hyderabad, took MINA, its AI-powered MindScience companion, to LEAP 2026 in Riyadh, putting the product in front of new audiences, meeting innovators from across the ecosystem, and gathering real-time reactions from people experiencing MINA for the first time. Exhibiting at an event of LEAP’s scale gives a mental health and cognitive science focused AI product exposure to a genuinely international audience, one considerably more diverse in background and expectation than the domestic user base MINA has likely been tested against up to this point.
Beyond exhibiting, the Core Cognitive team entered the AWS Agentic AI Hackathon held as part of LEAP’s AWS AI Academy programming at RECC Malham, a full-day innovation event where teams build agentic AI solutions directly using AWS tools including Amazon Bedrock, competing for recognition after an intensive multi-hour hacking session. The hackathon’s judging process, which narrows submissions down to a small group of finalist teams presenting before judges drawn from leading AI organizations, means Core Cognitive’s team had to design, build, and pitch a working agentic AI solution within a highly compressed timeframe, a genuinely different test from the more considered, longer-cycle development MINA’s core product presumably went through.
The team came away with second place at the hackathon, a result that stands out given the event drew participants from across the AWS AI Academy’s broader Riyadh programming, spanning developers, technologists, and entrepreneurs experimenting with agentic AI architectures well beyond Pakistan’s own startup ecosystem. Placing competitively in a technical build competition, rather than simply attending as an exhibitor, gives Core Cognitive a concrete, judged validation of its team’s technical capability, distinct from the softer, reaction-based feedback gathered through booth demonstrations of MINA itself.
NIC Hyderabad framed the achievement as an incredible LEAP 2026 journey for the Core Cognitive team, tying the hackathon result directly to the broader value of the center sending its incubated startups to major international platforms. The milestone adds to a growing list of NIC Hyderabad startups gaining international recognition this year, including HerSpace’s selection for the Nobel Women’s Initiative programme, continuing the center’s pattern of positioning its founders for genuine competitive opportunities on the international stage rather than treating international travel as an end in itself. The achievement was supported by Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, Ignite National Technology Fund, PTCL, LMKT, and Tech Destination Pakistan.
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