A structured education in artificial intelligence, free to anyone who wants it.
The material is already public. The hard part is guidance: an order worth following, and people further along who will work through it with you. That is the part we do, from a first introduction through to the olympiad level.
Artificial intelligence moves quickly, and almost everything you would need to learn it is already public.
Nothing about the information is scarce anymore.
Competitive AI is younger, and the path is still being built. That gap has a cost. Who gets good at this still depends too much on who already knows someone to ask.
The work is real. The route should be clear, too.
Free, in the open, and run by the students walking the path themselves.
Getting stuck is not the hard part. Getting stuck with nobody to ask is.
A good mentor does not need the whole field mapped out. Two or three years ahead of you is usually enough to see the dead end you are about to walk into, and to stay with you when the material stops making sense.
OpenGate is student-run and free. Our mentors come out of competition math, computer science, olympiad work, and research, and wherever you enter, the offer is the same: resources worth your time, people you can ask, and honest feedback on what you build.
Using AI carefully for real tasks, and knowing where its judgment runs out and yours has to take over.
The data science under the hype: what training data does, how classification works, and where bias enters.
Linear algebra, probability, optimization, and the matrix calculus that machine learning actually runs on.
Olympiad-style problems and contest practice, up through the USAAIO and the international selection rounds.
Reading current research, reproducing results, and working on the questions nobody has answered yet.
One meets students at their first introduction to AI. The other carries them through to the national olympiad. Both are free.
Weekend build events with mentors on hand, structured so that first-time participants finish a working project and receive written feedback on it.
In-person classes hosted with local libraries and schools, bringing our programs directly to students in their own communities.
Written notes on the higher-level material, from linear algebra through modern architectures, for seminars, reading groups, and self-study.
Developers, mentors, and chapter leads. If you can take an idea and build it into a program students will benefit from, we would like to hear from you.
Less a mission statement than a set of decisions we have already made, and have to keep making every time we run something.
Free is the whole thing, not a first taste.
Courses that begin free and end at a checkout page are common enough that people expect a catch. There is not one here. No tier unlocks a better version. The expensive part, an experienced person sitting with you while the material is confusing, is the part we lead with.
Nobody should have to learn this alone.
AI looks intimidating from the outside, and the fastest way past that is other people. Our programs run on shared resources, and questions get asked in the open, where the answer is worth something to whoever reads it next.
Starting without a map is not the same as starting behind.
Getting into AI often means working without the established pipelines that competition math and computer science already have. Plenty of students put in real work simply to reach the starting line. We count that as progress, not as a prerequisite you should have finished already.
Nobody here finished the path and came back to teach it. The people below are still sitting the same exams, which is most of the reason they still remember what was confusing.
Roster note: We have been adding people faster than we have been updating this page, so a few current members are still missing.
Network leadership
2026 CAIO camper · USAAIO nationals medalist
Co-founded The OpenGate Network and wrote the camp curriculum from the ground up.
Network leadership
2026 USAAIO nationals gold medalist
Co-founded The OpenGate Network and builds the guide that came out of it.
2026 Team USA · IOAI
2026 Team USA · IOAI · IAIO gold medalist
2026 Team USA · IAIO honorable mention · USAAIO camper
2026 Team Canada · IAIO silver medalist
2026 USAAIO nationals medalist
Chapters, outreach, development, instruction, mentorship. Pick the one you would actually enjoy.
OpenGate has never charged a student for anything. That has been possible because the people running it pay for the hosting, the tooling and the camp materials themselves. That cost is real and it grows with every student who joins. A donation spreads it across everyone the network reaches, instead of leaving it with the few people building it.
The OpenGate Network is fiscally sponsored by Hack Club, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Their EIN is 81-2908499, and donations are tax deductible in the US.
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