Builders and operators, together
CS and engineering students who can ship, sitting next to Gies students who can find the customer. Both kinds are in every project team.
Partner with AIBE
Fund the room where Illinois students build with AI.
We are a new RSO at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Our members don't write about AI — they ship products with it, in public, on a deadline. Sponsorship buys compute, food and prize money, and puts you in the room while they do it.
The case
Most student sponsorships buy a logo on a banner. This one buys a Saturday with the students who build.
AIBE exists because AI changed what one student can build alone, and almost no coursework has caught up. Our members spend the semester turning that into working products.
That makes them unusual to hire. They have shipped something, found out whether a stranger wanted it, priced it, and stood in front of judges to defend it — before they graduate. The ones who are good at this are visible by week six.
If your company sells developer tools, runs on AI, or hires people who have to figure things out without a spec, this is a cheap way to be in front of them early and often — as the company whose engineers taught them something, not the one with a table at a career fair.
We're candid about our stage: AIBE chartered in 2026 and our first full cohort runs in Spring 2027. Early partners get far more visibility per dollar than they will later, and we'd rather say that than pretend otherwise.
Who's in the room
Deliberately mixed.
Our constitution commits us to recruiting across business, engineering, computer science, the sciences, the humanities and the professional schools. Teams that combine those perspectives are the whole point.
Evidence, not resumes
By demo day every active member has a thing they built and can talk about. You can watch them present it rather than read a bullet point about it.
Two blocks from Research Park
If your company already has an office here, your team can walk to a Thursday workshop. We'd like them to.
Where the money goes
What we're actually trying to pay for.
Dues are $5 a semester and we waive them for anyone who needs it, so member dues cover almost nothing. This is the real list.
Biggest need
Hackathon prize funding
A full-day build twice a semester, ending in a funded winner. The prize is what makes teams treat it as real rather than as an exercise, and it is the single thing most likely to turn a project into a company.
Biggest need
API credits and GPU compute
Nobody should stop building because they ran out of tokens on a Saturday. Credits are the most directly useful thing a tooling company can give us, and they cost you less than cash.
Every week
Food at workshops and firesides
Unglamorous and completely decisive. Attendance at a 6 pm meeting in February is a different number with food than without it.
Hardware
Machines for running models locally
We want a small set of shared machines — Mac minis or equivalent — so members can run local models without a cloud bill. Retired or refurbished hardware is genuinely welcome.
A few times a year
Transport for field trips
Visits to AI company offices. Members currently chip in $40–50 each, which quietly excludes the people we most want to bring.
Occasional
Space, and printing
A room that fits a hackathon for a day. Posters and flyers across Siebel, Grainger, the Union and Gies. Small amounts, high leverage.
Support levels
Five ways in, and none of them are fixed.
These are our opening numbers for 2027, not a rate card. If a different shape works better for your budget or your legal team, say so — we would rather build something that fits than lose the conversation over a tier name.
Supporter
$250 or in-kind
- Named on this page and on the slide that opens every meeting
- Your opening at the top of our opportunities channel
- Our thanks, which is worth less than the rest of this list but we mean it
Workshop partner
$500 per semester
- Everything above
- Host or co-lead one workshop — your engineers teaching what they actually do
- Logo on that workshop's slides and promotion
- First look at members who go deep on your topic
Most useful to us
Semester partner
$1,500 per semester
- Everything above
- A speaker slot at a fireside or panel
- Judge at demo day, in the room when teams present
- Logo on all semester materials and the Quad Day table
- A resume book of members who opt in
Hackathon partner
$3,000 per event
- Everything above
- Named partner of a full-day hackathon — the thing students remember
- Set a challenge prompt teams can build against
- Your engineers mentoring on the floor all day
- Present the prize
Founding partner
$5,000+ per year
- Everything above, across both semesters
- Named as a founding partner for as long as AIBE exists
- A standing seat on our mentor and advisory bench
- First conversation on anything new we build
In-kind support counts. Credits, compute, hardware, food, space and your engineers' time map onto these levels at roughly their cash value — and for several of the needs above we would honestly rather have the in-kind version.
No budget? Still useful
Things that cost nothing and help a lot.
Several of the most valuable things a company has given a student organization were never line items.
Email usSend a speaker
An hour from someone who ships AI in production is worth more to our members than most things we could buy.
Mentor a project team
A few hours a semester advising a team that's stuck. Our constitution has a standing mentor role for exactly this.
Open a tool up
Extended trials, higher rate limits, or a student tier for our members. Costs you marginal compute; changes what a team can attempt.
Tell us about roles
Internships and new-grad openings posted to our members. No fee, and we'll tell you honestly if nobody fits.
Worth saying up front
What sponsorship does not buy.
Not legal boilerplate — these are commitments written into our constitution, and we would rather you read them now than discover them in a contract.
No endorsement
Sponsorship cannot require AIBE to endorse a sponsor's products. We will name you, thank you properly and give you a real platform — we won't tell members your tool is the best one.
No claim on members' work
Sponsorship gives no rights to anything members build. Ideas, work product and any venture coming out of a project team belong to the students who created them. AIBE itself takes no equity or revenue share, and we can't sign that away on their behalf.
No University endorsement
AIBE is a separate legal entity from the University of Illinois. We can't represent or imply that the University supports your company, product or brand, and we can't extend the University's tax-exempt status to a purchase.
Funds go to the club, not to ventures
Sponsorship money funds AIBE's activities. It is never used to fund or invest in an individual member's venture, including a prize winner's — prize funding is awarded as club programming, not as an investment.
Recruiting is opt-in
We'll happily put your roles in front of members and share a resume book of people who choose to be in it. We don't hand over a membership list.
Process
How this actually goes.
- Step 1
You email us
Our Treasurer handles sponsorships and will be your point of contact throughout. Tell us roughly what you have in mind, or tell us nothing and ask us what we need.
- Step 2
A short conversation
Fifteen minutes on what you want out of it. We'll be straight about what we can deliver at our size and what we can't yet.
- Step 3
We write it down
A one-page agreement covering what you give, what you get and for how long. Any sponsorship is approved by our Executive Board and handled in line with University policy.
- Step 4
You hear from us after
What your money paid for, how many people turned up, what got built. If it didn't work, we'll tell you that too — it's the only way the second year is worth more than the first.
Our partners
This space is deliberately empty.
We haven't signed our first sponsor yet. When we do, they go here — and they'll be the one we talk about for years, because they backed this before there was anything to point at.
Talk to us
One email is enough to start.
Tell us what you're trying to get out of a student partnership and we'll tell you honestly whether we can deliver it this year. If we can't, we'll say so.
Faculty, alumni and graduate students who'd like to mentor rather than sponsor: the same address reaches us.