- October 21, 2026
- By XFoundry Staff
A video clip travels without the conversation around it. A claim circulates across social media platforms without its source. Finding what is missing takes time. A new student competition from the University of Maryland’s xFoundry challenges students to make that search easier, building products people choose to use and return to — without telling them what to believe.
xFoundry opened registration on Monday for Before You Share, inviting student teams to build digital products that help people recover the sources and missing context behind online content. More than 30 universities have already signed on to bring the competition to their students.
“Students are building two things at once: a multidisciplinary team and a product people need,” said Amir Ansari, founder and executive director of xFoundry. “They gain real work experience by combining different skills, navigating disagreements, making tradeoffs and delivering for real users. That experience matters whether they launch a company or take those skills to an employer.”
Over 18 months, teams of three to six will build, launch and test their products against standards for source quality, user retention and commercial demand. Teams may combine human expertise and AI as they choose; their development and operating costs are scored as part of the business case. Products must remain private and user-controlled, without advertising.
“This competition offers the opportunity to create something meaningful to a public flooded with half-truths and misinformation,” said Rafael Lorente, dean of UMD’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
The winning team will enter xFoundry's six-month Xcelerate program and become eligible for up to $1 million in SAFE (simple agreement for future equity) investment from Xponential Venture Fund.
“The challenge of our times will be to enable the individual to apply the media, now essentially accessible to all, to the task of separating reality from an encroaching universe of AI slop. It’s a worthy challenge,” said Ted Koppel, veteran broadcast journalist and CBS News “Sunday Morning” senior contributor who served as an adviser on the development of this competition.