Competition terms and conditions

The competition is run by Emergent Methods LLC, the company behind AskNews, of Colorado, USA ("we", "us"). You can reach us at [email protected].

It is not sponsored, endorsed or run by TechEx Events Ltd or AI & Big Data Expo Europe.

Registered attendees of AI & Big Data Expo Europe 2026 (Amsterdam, 19–20 October 2026) who are 18 or over and have an AskNews account registered with a work email: an address at their employer's own domain, not a personal, relay or disposable mail service. On the stand's laptop, the email you give us counts instead.

Employees and contractors of Emergent Methods and its subsidiaries, members of their households, and staff of TechEx Events Ltd cannot win.

If your employer has rules about accepting gifts or prizes, it is up to you to follow them.

Ask DeepNews a question on asknews.app/events/techex-2026, then post the report to the TechEx wall with your name and company. Every report posted while entries are open from a work email is entered. A report posted from a personal email is published on the TechEx page but is not entered.

Entry is free. No purchase is needed, and a free AskNews account is enough.

You can post up to ten reports. Your best-scoring report is your entry; one person holds one place on the leaderboard.

Entries open when posting to the wall opens on 19 October 2026 and close on 20 October 2026 at 16:00 Amsterdam time (CEST). Reports posted after the close stay on the wall but are not entered.

The competition is about the question. A question is not entered if it tells the agent how to search (which tools, how many searches, how deep), staples several unrelated questions together, is addressed to the competition, the screen or the system rather than the news, or is off the conference's themes.

Questions are checked automatically when you post, by a list of phrasings and an AI review of the question alone. Where the check cannot decide, our staff review the entry. Our decision on eligibility is final.

Every report also passes the wall's content moderation. A report that is held, rejected or later taken down, or that you remove, leaves the leaderboard.

Score = research rounds × the number of distinct tools that returned results, both measured automatically from the research run behind your report.

Ties go to the report with more cited sources, then to the report posted first.

The leaderboard at asknews.app/events/techex-2026 and on the screen at Stand 169 shows the current standings. The order when entries close decides the prizes, subject to section 8.

First place: €400, paid by bank transfer to an account in the winner's name, within 30 days of us receiving the winner's details.

First to twentieth place (the winner included): an AskNews hoodie each, subject to the sizes we have.

Prizes are not transferable, and the hoodie has no cash alternative. You are responsible for any tax due on a prize in your country, except where the law requires us to withhold or pay it.

The winner is announced at Stand 169 on 20 October 2026 at about 16:15, and the top 20 can collect their hoodies there.

If you are not at the stand, we email the address on your AskNews account. To claim, reply within 14 days with your full name and, for first place, the bank details for the transfer. If a prize is not claimed in time, or a winner is not eligible, it passes to the next eligible entry on the leaderboard.

We may ask winners to show their conference badge or other proof that they are eligible before we hand over or pay a prize.

We may disqualify entries made through more than one account, by automated means, or in any other way that games the scoring or breaks these terms or the wall's rules, and take them off the leaderboard.

The leaderboard shows the name you posted with, your company when it matches your email's domain, your question and your score. Nothing else about you is shown. We keep the company you typed so our staff can reach a winner.

We use the email on your account to contact you about a prize, and the bank details of the winner only to pay the prize. We keep payment records as accounting law requires. Our privacy policy at asknews.app/privacy covers the rest.

If something outside our control prevents the competition from running as described, we may change or end it and will say so on this page. We will not reduce the prizes for entries already made.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

These terms are governed by Dutch law, and the courts of Amsterdam have jurisdiction. If you enter as a consumer, you keep any protection that the law of your own country gives you and that cannot be waived.