Residency
A live-in house for AI founders and researchers who work every waking minute. Residents intermingle with top engineering talent at monthly build days and bring them on as early employees.
The heartland's AI hacker house.
312 House is a community of AI founders, builders, and researchers living and working together to ship the next generation of applied AI, from Chicago's western suburbs to the world.
01 Merit-based residency
02 Hackathons & build days
03 Never charged for community events
Our Mission
Accelerate Chicagoland's transition to applied AI.
The coasts have their hacker houses. The Midwest has grit, universities, and one of the densest talent corridors in the country. 312 House is where AI founders, builders, and researchers come together to share ideas, challenge each other, and ship.
We host hackathons, dinners, and fireside chats that draw the brightest AI minds from across the region. Attendance is merit-based. We never charge participants for community events, and most are heavily oversubscribed.
This isn't about chasing a distant notion of AGI. It's about democratizing access to AI technology, building real products, and bringing measured optimism to the work, one token at a time.
8–12
Resident builders
200+
Event attendees
312
Chicago area code
$0
Cost to attend
What We Do
A house, a community, a launchpad.
Four pillars hold up everything that happens at 312 House, from the residents who live here to the founders we back.
Hackathons
48-hour build sprints on the frontier: agents, multimodal, infrastructure. Often several times oversubscribed.
Community
Dinners, fireside chats, and Friday music nights that connect builders to each other.
Venture
Pre-seed backing for the most ambitious resident founders.
The House
On the I-88 tech corridor.
312 House sits in Naperville, Illinois, the heart of the western suburbs' I-88 tech corridor, with direct access to the employers, rail, and talent that make a hacker house work.
312 House · Build Room
Metra BNSF & UP-W
Minutes to Naperville and West Chicago stations, 46–59 minutes express to downtown Chicago and the Loop's developer scene.
I-88 Research Corridor
Exit 125 puts you on the Reagan Memorial Tollway, beside the Cantera corporate park: BP, EN Engineering, and Exelon, and a short drive to Fermilab and Argonne.
The Talent Pool
North Central College, College of DuPage's new AI degree, Benedictine, Wheaton College, and NIU Naperville, a dense, commuting-distance CS & AI student base.
Community Anchors
Bureau Gravity in downtown Aurora and the Naperville AI Summit keep the regional builder community within arm's reach year-round.
Residency
Who lives in the house.
A relentless work ethic is a prerequisite. Residents are AI founders, researchers, and builders shipping real products, from applied AI for industry to developer tooling.
AK
AI Founder
Applied AI · Industry verticals
"I work every waking minute. The house is the fastest feedback loop I've ever been part of."
RN
ML Researcher
Agents · Evaluation
"Dinner turns into a whiteboard session turns into a deployed prototype by morning."
MJ
Builder
Infra · Dev tools
"The hackathons here are a recruiting pipeline. We've hired two engineers from one build day."
Founders
Who's building 312 House.
The people turning a western-suburbs house into the heartland's hub for applied AI.
Anil
Co-Founder, 312 House · Senior Data Scientist, CVS Health
Anil leads AI/ML engineering by day and builds the Chicagoland builder community by night. As a Senior Data Scientist at CVS Health, he ships applied AI at enterprise scale, and as Co-Founder of 312 House, he's creating the live-in environment where the region's AI founders and researchers turn ideas into shipped products. He also organizes the Naperville AI Summit and mentors the ThinkAI Academy cohorts that feed the house's talent pipeline.
Hackathons & Events
Build days, all year.
Attendance is merit-based and never charged. Most events are heavily oversubscribed, so tell us about you so we can make sure you get the most out of it.
SEP 12
Upcoming
AI Lead-Follow-Up Agent Hackathon
Build an AI agent that automates lead follow-up for a local service business — contractor, gym, clinic, or salon. Teams ship a working demo by 11:45 AM that takes a sample lead (name, inquiry, contact) and produces an automated next step: an email draft, SMS reply, or CRM entry. Backup tracks: internal-docs Q&A bot, attendee matchmaking, narrow AI tutor.
Reserve your spot
SEP 5
Past
Build Your Career in the AI Era
A hands-on workshop and panel for founders, students, and professionals navigating careers in applied AI. Learn the skills that matter, meet hiring teams, and map your next move.
Join
Apply to live, build, or attend.
Whether you're a researcher, a founder, an engineer, or a non-technical AI enthusiast, there's a place for you here. Fill out your profile to set the basis for membership and event invitations.
Merit-based · We never sell your information to third parties
FAQ
Questions, answered.
What is 312 House?
312 House is a community of AI founders, builders, and researchers that aims to accelerate Chicagoland's transition to applied AI. We host events, invest in founders, and connect AI builders to pressing industry problems, all from a live-in house on the I-88 corridor.
Are events free and open to all?
Access to all 312 House events is merit-based. We never charge participants for community events. Most events are heavily oversubscribed, so we love to know more about you to make sure you get the most out of the experience.
What are the benefits of joining?
Filling out your profile sets the basis for your membership and invitations to our events. Residents get a live-in build environment, access to the hackathon talent pipeline, and introductions to investors and frontier labs. We never sell your information to third parties.
I'm not a hacker. Can I still join?
Yes. We welcome all AI enthusiasts, from developers to researchers to digital artists, to join the community. We offer a range of opportunities for non-technical members to contribute and learn.
Our company is interested in AI. Who do we contact?
312 House matches your business challenges with the best and brightest AI talent. Reach out to hello@312house.com and we'll connect you with builders working on exactly your problem.
Do you run events outside Chicago?
We host most of our events at the house in Naperville, IL and across the Chicagoland area, with plans to expand through our founder network. Watch the events list for regional build days.