Speaking to some of the best and brightest student developers at Imagine Cup, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella once said, “All of you represent that passion, that ability to dream the impossible and make it possible.”

The Imagine Cup embraces this principle as the company’s global student innovation competition. Now celebrating its 15th anniversary, the competition represents Microsoft’s enduring commitment to supporting young developers and their drive to create the next game-changing innovations.

Last fall, we launched the 2017 Imagine Cup competition along with the news that we were upping the ante and doubling the top prize to $100,000 for the winning team. Now, I’ve got even more exciting announcements.

Students competing in Imagine Cup will also vie for the chance to have a mentoring session with our CEO, during which they will have the opportunity to draw upon his years of experience in the technology industry to help them take their project to the next level.

Also, we want to celebrate the Imagine Cup’s 15th anniversary by immersing these talented young developers in Microsoft’s culture of innovation, which has fostered the development of cutting-edge Microsoft products across a variety of technologies, including the cloud, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and more. To that end, we’re holding the competition at Microsoft headquarters so students can mingle amongst the tens of thousands of Microsoft employees who come to work every day with a desire to impact millions of people through the power of technology.