⚛️🤖 Quantum AI Hackathon — Where AI Agents Meet Qubits

Build Next-Generation Quantitative Trading Systems across HFT, Mid-Frequency Trading, Risk & AI Foundation Models

Presented by Berkeley Gateway Accelerator, XpyQ, Oakland Hardware Meetup, and Informal Spaces — this is an intensive, in-person weekend challenge bringing together quant researchers, quantum algorithm engineers, ML practitioners, and AI model builders to prototype the next generation of trading systems.

📍 Berkeley Gateway HQ — Downtown Berkeley

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🚨 How to Secure Your Spot as a Participant

Two steps are both required to be considered:

1️⃣ Apply on Luma to reserve your seat → Register here
2️⃣ Complete the follow-up survey sent after registration — this allows organizers to match you to the right track and team

Spots are limited to approximately 10 teams. Apply early.
👀 Observers are also welcome!

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🌐 Why This Matters Now

The next era of quantitative finance is not classical. U.S. quant funds suffered their worst momentum selloff in three years in early 2026 — dropping 2.8% in just two weeks. Meanwhile, the quantum-AI risk hedge platform market is expanding at a 28.5% CAGR, projected to reach $10.71B by 2030. The window to build domain expertise before institutional standardization narrows closes within the next 2–3 years.

McKinsey projects that 50% of major financial institutions will deploy hybrid quantum trading systems by 2028. This hackathon is a live preview of the teams building that future.

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🏁 Four Frontier Competition Tracks

⚡ Track 01 — High-Frequency Execution

Deploy Quantum Reinforcement Learning (QRL) agents on live Limit Order Book (LOB) data. Your benchmark: beat the LSTM/Transformer baseline.

📈 Track 02 — Mid-Frequency Alpha Generation

Leverage QAOA/VQE portfolio optimization across 50–500 assets. Your benchmark: beat Markowitz + CVXPY.

🛡️ Track 03 — Risk & Regulatory Compliance

Build hybrid CVaR circuits combined with quantum Monte Carlo methods. Your benchmark: beat classical historical VaR.

🧠 Track 04 — AI Foundation Models (Cross-cutting)

Fine-tune Chronos, TimesFM, or Kronos, or deploy an agentic LLM pipeline. Your benchmark: beat zero-shot generic TSFMs.

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👤 Who Should Attend?

📊 Quant Researchers & Algorithmic Traders

Classical factor crowding is structurally fragile — quantum-enhanced strategies tackle regime failure from angles classical models simply cannot reach. Build systems judged on real metrics: Sharpe ratio, CVaR, information coefficient, and execution P&L.

🔬 Quantum Engineers & ML Practitioners

Work against real financial data — not toy benchmarks — with full hardware access to IBM Quantum (Heron chip), IonQ, AWS Braket, and D-Wave, plus frameworks including PyTorch, JAX, LangChain, and LlamaIndex. Results are evaluated by industry professionals who prioritize reproducible outcomes.

💼 Investors & Hedge Fund Guests

Join as an observer, judge, or sponsor. A formal Awards Dinner the following Wednesday provides a structured opportunity for industry guests to engage with top-performing teams.

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📅 Event Agenda

🗓️ Prep Week — 7 Days Prior (Async via Slack)

Day	Topic
Monday	Market microstructure primer: LOB dynamics, tick data, order types
Tuesday	Quantum computing primer: QAOA, VQE, QUBO, NISQ-era constraints
Wednesday	AI foundation models for finance: Chronos, TimesFM, Kronos — fine-tuning vs. zero-shot
Thursday	Quantum ML: QRL, QSVM, VQC, quantum kernel methods
Friday	Dataset access, API keys (IBM Quantum, Alpaca, Polygon.io), track briefings

Arrive Day 1 with your environment configured and classical baselines already running.

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🔨 Day 1 — 12-Hour Build Sprint

• 9:00 AM — Doors Open
• 10:00 AM — Opening Keynote: Quantum + AI for Hedge Funds — The 2026 Landscape
• 11:30 AM — Build Block 1: Core algorithm prototyping, quantum circuit design, model architecture
• 1:30 PM — Lunch + Mentor Office Hours
• 2:00 PM — Build Block 2: Backtesting, benchmarking, hyperparameter tuning
• 5:30 PM — Checkpoint Demos (5 min/team, non-judged) + Mentor Feedback
• 6:00 PM — Build Block 3: Integration, result validation, final documentation
• 9:00 PM — 🔒 Code Freeze — all repositories locked

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🎤 Day 2 — Presentations

• 9:00 AM — Doors Open, final submission upload & presentation setup
• 10:30 AM — Team Presentations: 10-min demo + 5-min judge Q&A per team
• 12:00 PM — Judge Deliberation (closed session)
• 12:30 PM — Participants dismissed; scores sealed until the Awards Dinner

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🏆 Awards & Prizes

Award	Prize
🥇 Grand Prize	$2,000 + exclusive invite to Formal Awards Dinner
🥈 Runner-Up	Second overall + exclusive invite to Formal Awards Dinner
🏅 Track Champions ×4	Best project per track: HFT, MFT, Risk & Compliance, AI Foundation Models
⚛️ Quantum Advantage Award	Most rigorous demonstration of quantum speedup or accuracy lift over classical baseline
🤖 Best Foundation Model	Most impactful FinTSFM or agentic LLM deployment
💡 Most Creative Approach	Judges' discretionary prize for novel problem framing

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🛠️ Infrastructure & Tools

⚛️ Quantum Hardware & SDKs

IBM Quantum (Heron chip) · IonQ · AWS Braket · D-Wave
Qiskit · PennyLane · Amazon Braket SDK · D-Wave Ocean

🤖 AI & Foundation Models

Chronos · TimesFM · Lag-Llama · Kronos · MOIRAI-2
LangChain · LlamaIndex · Hugging Face Transformers

📊 Classical ML & Data

PyTorch · TensorFlow · scikit-learn · JAX
Polygon.io · Alpaca Markets · yFinance · Simulated LOB tick feeds

⚡ Execution Simulation

Backtrader · Zipline-reloaded · Custom HFT sandbox

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🤝 Partner Organizations

• Berkeley Gateway Accelerator — Venture accelerator focused on frontier capital and deep tech commercialization, based in Downtown Berkeley
• XpyQ — Building next-generation quantum-AI infrastructure for quantitative finance applications
• Oakland Hardware Meetup — A Bay Area community of hardware engineers, makers, and builders advancing hands-on technical collaboration
• Informal Spaces — Flexible venue and community infrastructure for technical events, workshops, and collaborative builds

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📝 Important Notes

• Teams may self-pair or be matched from the accepted-but-unmatched applicant pool
• Prep materials distributed one week prior via Slack
• An IP participation agreement is required at registration

👉 Register on Luma