From Dorm-Room Brainstorms to a $10K Win by Drexel’s Team Xploit

The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence has created a massive wave of innovation. Companies across every sector, from finance and aviation to e-commerce and retail, are racing to deploy autonomous AI agents to interact with customers, manage workflows and handle sensitive data. But as these digital agents become more common, a major cybersecurity question has emerged: how do developers ensure these systems are secure before they go live?

Looking to answer that question is Xploit, an early-stage startup team founded by a group of Drexel University students and alumni. Over a single, high-intensity weekend, this multidisciplinary team took their technical prototype straight to the Philadelphia tech ecosystem, walking away with first place and a $10,000 investment at United Effects Ventures’ (UEV) Venture Building Weekend.

Xploit’s recent victory does more than just validate a timely tech concept; it highlights a powerful shift on campus: student innovators are no longer waiting until graduation to interface with a city’s broader professional networks. They are leveraging resources across different departments to build venture-ready companies right now.

Finding Vulnerabilities in the AI Boom

While many student projects begin with lifestyle apps or campus novelties, the founders of Xploit aimed straight for a complex, enterprise-level challenge. As businesses build applications on top of AI agents, they introduce new attack surfaces that traditional firewalls simply aren’t built to evaluate.

Tony Okeke, BS and MS biomedical engineering ’24, is a machine-learning engineer and co-founder of Xploit. He breaks down the specific problem they are trying to solve:

The foundation of Xploit rests on a strong team dynamic forged right on Drexel’s campus. The five-person team, consisting of Tony, Kamdi Okeke, BS computer science ’26; Dalu Okonkwo, BS computer science ’26; Michael Moemeke, BS biomedical engineering ’26; and Kiitan Fawole, BS computer science ’26, have been close friends since their freshman year. Before launching Xploit, they spent three to four years sharpening their collaborative chemistry at local competitions like Drexel’s CodeFest and the Foundry Hackathon. Xploit represents the third full-scale product concept this tight-knit group has engineered together since 2022.

Inside the 48-Hour Grind: Refining the Business Case

The UEV Venture Building Weekend, hosted at Ben Franklin Technology Partners at 1600 Market Street, brought together young operators, founders and students from across the regional ecosystem. Sponsored by industry leaders JPMorgan and Wilftek, the two-day sprint was designed to help early-stage founders turn raw ideas into viable business concepts.

For the Xploit team, entering the competition wasn’t about proving they could write code because they already had a working prototype. It was about mastering the commercial side of marketing a product to companies.

Kamdi Okeke, BS biomedical engineering ’26, recalls the intense rhythm of the weekend:

Whenever it’s a hackathon and you have a time crunch from Saturday to Sunday morning, it’s always going to get intense. Especially when it’s 4 a.m. and you’re cleaning up the final pitch or trying to make sure your code doesn’t break. But because we’ve done hackathons before, we know how to navigate those situations.

That endurance paid off. During intense mentorship sessions, the team received critical feedback from venture capitalists that helped reshape their commercial strategy. Originally hyper-focused on just the technical engine, the team developed a more realistic, dual-motion go-to-market plan: utilizing developer-led adoption to gather initial feedback, which could eventually grow into team-wide and enterprise licensing.

When it came time to pitch to the panel of judges, Xploit stood out. They didn’t just showcase an abstract concept; they brought a functional Minimum Viable Product (MVP), clear technical background and a strong strategy for approaching customers. Hearing their name announced as the grand prize winner provided a massive wave of validation for the months of quiet technical development they had already put in.

Navigating an Open Campus Ecosystem

What makes Xploit’s journey a compelling blueprint for other students is their academic background. As STEM majors in biomedical engineering and computer science rather than traditional business students, the team proves that entrepreneurship spans far beyond a single department.

Even though they are not enrolled in the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship, the founders credit the Close School’s open-door philosophy and university-wide resources as fundamental pillars of their progress. They have integrated themselves deeply into the campus ecosystem, utilizing the co-working spaces and incubation community at the Baiada Institute for Entrepreneurship.

Dalu Okonkwo, BS computer science ’26, reflects on the collaborative environment that welcomed his team:

I didn’t know about the Close School until junior year, But since I’ve been here, the number of people working on different ideas and pouring ideas into one another has been incredible. The Close School is an amazing resource for anyone with ideas, whether that’s tech, finance, fashion or anything else. There are a lot of people who genuinely want to help you build.

This open framework is exactly how Drexel interfaces with the larger Philadelphia market. By forming organic relationships with ecosystem networks like United Effects Ventures, Drexel allows its students to step off campus, test their ideas in front of real investors and bring that market-tested perspective back to the classroom.

The Next Steps for Xploit

With $10,000 in fresh capital, Xploit is focused on refinement. The team plans to deploy the funding directly into developing their attack engine and subsidizing usage costs for an initial set of users, allowing real-world developers to test the system against their products and provide live feedback.

Looking six months down the road, the co-founders hope to secure a spot in a startup accelerator program to help them gain further traction in the industry.

For the aspiring entrepreneur sitting in a college dorm room right now holding onto a rough concept or a half-written piece of code, the Xploit founders offer a simple piece of advice: don’t overthink it, just start.

“It’s never been easier to turn an idea into a product, and it’s never been cheaper or faster to do it,” Okonkwo says. “Bring your friends along, try things and put it out there. You’ll be amazed where you can end up in a few years.”