C:\>DIR Global ‘Agentic Regulator’ Hackathon

The gap in AI adoption is growing

Join us in bridging that gap at the C:\>DIR Global ‘Agentic Regulator’ Hackathon - the first ever hackathon to build agentic AI solutions for public authorities

DATE: 8 July - 18 September 2026

Register here

There is a growing gap in agentic AI adoption. Financial institutions and FinTechs are moving faster than regulators. This adoption gap creates significant vulnerabilities, widening 'trust fractures.

Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (2026): The 2026 Global AI in Financial Services Report: Adoption, impact and risks. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Judge Business School.

What?

The C:\>DIR Global ‘Agentic Regulator’ Hackathon brings together regulators, AI researchers, engineers, academics, financial institutions, FinTechs, infrastructure providers, and technology partners to create agentic AI solutions for regulators.

The hackathon enables participants to work with rich problem spaces, synthetic datasets, regulatory context, and expert mentors to create concept notes (in the preliminary round) and agentic AI prototypes (in the final round) that can be deployed to enhance and improve policymaking, regulation, authorisation/licensing, supervisory and enforcement processes, as well as facilitate inter-agency and cross-regulatory coordination and collaboration.

Why?

Agentic AI is increasingly disrupting financial systems and the wider digital economy. AI agents are being used to automate decisions, execute complex workflows, transfer value, monitor markets, and interact with consumers. All at machine speed.

As agentic AI transforms industries, public authorities including financial and non-financial regulators (e.g. data, communications, competition regulators) need to adopt agentic AI capabilities themselves to keep pace, to maintain trust and to ensure effective policymaking, regulation, supervision and governance.

This hackathon is designed to enable multi-disciplinary teams to leverage agentic AI to build prototypes in order to support real regulatory and policy workflows all over the world.

Who?

We invite participants to form collaborative teams and also welcome applications from existing regulatory authorities, innovative companies and organisations, as well as researchers, experts, entrepreneurs and students from around the world.

  • THE “AUTHORITIES”

    THE “AUTHORITIES”

    Participating teams from central banks, financial regulators, data protection authorities, ministries of finance, financial intelligence units, payments regulators, competition authorities and communications regulators etc.

  • THE “BUILDERS”

    THE “BUILDERS”

    Machine learning engineers, LLM application developers, agentic AI architects, data experts, PhD researchers, infrastructure providers, cloud and model providers, technical builders, etc.

  • THE “EXPERTS”

    Experts in financial services, FinTechs, digital assets, digital payments, blockchain & smart contracts, anti-scam and financial crime prevention, financial advice, cybersecurity, academics, entrepreneurs as well as students.

  • THE “OBSERVERS”

    THE “OBSERVERS”

    We welcome public authorities across all regulatory domains to join as Observers for Demo Day & Live Voting on 15 September 2026. We will also engage with you throughout the hackathon process and beyond.

How?

Teams will select one or multiple problem spaces to work on:

Teams must select at least one of the following priority tracks for their agentic prototypes:

  • AGENTIC FINANCIAL & HIGH-STAKES AI ADVICE

    AGENTIC FINANCIAL & HIGH-STAKES AI ADVICE

    Mitigate risks to consumers using autonomous LLMs & agentic advisors for high-stakes decisions within financial services and the wider digital economy, including model biases, hallucinations, lack of explainability and compliance breaches.

    SUPPORTED BY MONEYBOX

    Visit the problem space page

    Download the problem space pack
  • AI-DRIVEN FRAUD & SCAMS

    AI-DRIVEN FRAUD & SCAMS

    Combat the industrial-scale use of AI for criminal purposes to create deepfakes, synthetic identities, and hyper-personalised frauds and scams in order to protect consumers, financial systems and society.




    Visit the problem space page

    Download the problem space pack
  • AGENTIC PAYMENTS & COMMERCE & THEIR OVERSIGHT

    AGENTIC PAYMENTS & COMMERCE & THEIR OVERSIGHT

    Create oversight for high-velocity, machine-to-machine agentic payments and commerce, to detect and prevent automated illicit transactions, develop ‘Know Your Agent’ protocols, and agentic solutions for solving accountability and redress issues.

    SUPPORTED BY ANT INTERNATIONAL

    Visit the problem space page

    Download the problem space pack
  • KNOW YOUR AGENT (KY-A), DIGITAL VERIFICATION & DIGITAL PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE

    KNOW YOUR AGENT (KY-A), DIGITAL VERIFICATION & DIGITAL PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE

    Develop agentic solutions, protocols or infrastructure to authenticate and verify AI agents and detect autonomous exploitation of digital public infrastructure layers (e.g. digital ID & data sharing).




    Visit the problem space page

    Download the problem space pack
  • DECENTRALISED MARKET INFRASTRUCTURE, SMART CONTRACTS & AI AGENTS BY ETHEREUM FOUNDATION

    DECENTRALISED MARKET INFRASTRUCTURE, SMART CONTRACTS & AI AGENTS

    Wallet-connected AI agents now can transact directly with self-executing smart contracts - routing orders, managing collateral and rebalancing liquidity across DeFi and tokenised markets. What agentic solutions can help public authorities to understand and monitor agentic on-chain activities and mitigate potential systemic vulnerabilities?

    SUPPORTED BY THE ETHEREUM FOUNDATION

    Visit the problem space page

    Download the problem space pack
  • MARKET MANIPULATION, AGENTIC HERDING & STABILITY

    MARKET MANIPULATION, AGENTIC HERDING & STABILITY

    Create agentic solutions that will monitor and mitigate against potential market manipulation and herding by autonomous AI agents.






    Visit the problem space page

    Download the problem space pack

Explore how your solution to the problem space applies across one or several stages of the policy making process:

Preliminary Round

For the Preliminary Round, Teams will be asked to submit a Concept Note for each of the problem spaces selected. The Concept Note should not be more than 1,500 words and must include schematics. Please see available concept note guidelines and template.

Concept Notes must be submitted by 9 August 2026 (23:59 BST).

Final Round

Selected teams will be given access NayaOne with synthetic data sets and tooling to build working prototypes over the course of a week as part of a virtual hackathon from 1st September to 8th September.

Each team will produce a standardised submission. Open-source is encouraged to enable wider adoption but not a requirement, especially for established firms and services providers (e.g. regtech firms, suptech vendors or technology firms). Teams are encouraged to outline how their proposed solution(s) can be scaled and transferred across regulatory domains and jurisdictions.

Every prototype must include and demonstrate approaches to the following guardrails:

  • Human-in-the-loop

  • Auditability & Traceability

  • Safety & governance controls

  • Cyber risk

Guidelines: Download the concept note guidelines
Template: Download the concept note
Register Here

Judging & Showcase

Participants will participate in a virtual Demo Day + Live Voting with 100+ regulators.

The top solutions will be selected to present at finals for judging by C:\>DIR Cambridge Regulator Fellows, including 15+ senior global regulatory leaders who will assess the solutions developed.

The winners will be announced as part of the C:\>DIR Summit which will be held in Cambridge on 18th September 2026.

Promising solutions may be contacted at a later date and be invited to enter an accelerator or incubation track.

When?

8 July to 9 August 2026: Preliminary Round

9 August 2026 (23:59 BST): Final date for submission of Concept Notes

1 September to 8 September 2026: Final Round

15 September 2026: Virtual Demo & Live Voting by Regulators Globally

17 September 2026: Judging Day with C:\>DIR Fellows

18 September 2026: Winner Announcement during the C:\>DIR Summit

Why Participate?

• Collaborate with regulators and innovators worldwide

• Develop solutions to address real public-sector challenges

• Showcase your work on a platform with 100+ global policymakers and leaders

• Contribute to building the future of trusted AI governance

• Receive £300 in cloud compute if selected for the Final Round

• Prize pool of $100k available for multiple prizes

• 2 tickets for each winning team to the Singapore FinTech Festival

Register Here

Prizes

Prize pool of up to

$100,000

Total prize pool
The C:>DIR Global Agentic Regulator Hackathon offers a total prize pool of USD 100,000.

Selection and distribution
USD 75,000 will be awarded to the six highest-ranked teams as follows: first place USD 35,000; second place USD 15,000; third place USD 10,000; and USD 5,000 to each of the teams placed fourth to sixth. Where a winning participant is affiliated with a regulator or other public authority, the corresponding prize will be paid to that institution, to be applied to projects related to the hackathon submission.

Vouch.finance prize
A further USD 25,000 is reserved for the highest-ranked team that builds its solution using issuance.vouch.finance. This prize may be awarded to a team placed outside the top six, or as a supplement to a top-six team that used the platform. For example, if the fifth-placed team built its solution on vouch.finance, its total award would be USD 30,000 (USD 5,000 + USD 25,000).

Singapore Fintech Festival
In addition to the cash prizes, each of the six winning teams will be invited to send two representatives to the Singapore Fintech Festival, with complimentary event tickets provided (travel and accommodation excluded). Winning teams will also present their use cases and share the hackathon's findings at a dedicated festival session.

Interested in participating?

Get in touch if you would like to become a partner or a sponsor: hackathon@cdir.global‍

An initiative of

Regulatory partners

Supporters

Ecosystem

Academic partners

Technology partners

Contact

For additional questions, please contact: hackathon@cdir.global

Frequently Asked Questions

This FAQ applies together with our Terms and Conditions. If there is any conflict between the two, the Terms and Conditions will apply.

General Information

  • The Agentic Regulator Global Virtual Hackathon brings individuals in a multi-disciplinary environment to collaboratively build agentic AI prototypes that strengthen trust, resilience, and oversight in the future financial system and digital economy.

    The hackathon focuses on practical public-sector applications of AI across areas such as supervision, fraud detection, payments oversight, cyber resilience, digital public infrastructure, and market abuse.

  • The hackathon is organised by Fii as part of the C:\>DIR global policy convening initiative, in collaboration with regulatory authorities, academic institutions, technology partners, and industry stakeholders.

  • The hackathon is virtual initiative, enabling participation across jurisdictions and time zones. Selected showcase events, presentations, or conference activities may include optional in-person participation.

  • We welcome participation from:

    • Regulators

    • Public authorities

    • Central Banks

    • AI researchers and academics,

    • Engineers and developers,

    • RegTechs and SupTechs,

    • Financial institutions,

    • Infrastructure providers,

    • Technology companies.

  • No. The hackathon is intentionally multidisciplinary. Regulators, policy specialists, and domain experts are critical participants and may contribute through:

    • Defining problem spaces

    • Mapping workflow

    • Governance design

    • Legal and policy guidance

    • Subject matter expertise.

  • You reserve the right to withdraw or cancel your application at any time but must notify the hackathon organisers as soon as you make the decision to withdraw or cancel.

  • Yes. Teams can consist of 1 or more individuals.

  • Yes. Institutions, regulators, universities, startups, and companies are encouraged to register teams or nominate participants.

     Where an individual participates, they do so in a personal capacity and represent that their participation and any submissions do not breach any obligations owed to their employer or any third party.

    Where a team participates on behalf of an organisation, that organisation is responsible for compliance with these Terms, including any indemnities and licences granted under them.

  • There is no fee to participate.

  • You are encouraged to register as a Participant. 

    As a participant, you will be required to submit a Concept Note, including a schematic, to take part in the Hackathon.

    If you are a public authority and are not selected for the Build portion of the Hackathon, you will be invited to register as an Observer.

    Only public authorities can register as an Observer.

  • Participant LinkedIn profiles will be subject to review and participants who are selected for the Build Hackathon will be screened against sanctions lists to ensure compliance with UK and international sanctions law.

Hackathon - preliminary round

  • No, you will not automatically qualify for the second part of the hackathon if you register for the preliminary round.  

  • Rather than prescribing a single narrow solution pathway, the hackathon provides participants with broad regulatory problem spaces and encourages diverse technical approaches and experimentation.

    Teams are expected to develop creative, practical, and responsible solutions within defined governance and safety boundaries.

  • You must submit a Concept Note addressing one of the Problem Spaces to be considered for the Build portion of the Hackathon.

    Only shortlisted applicants will proceed to the Build Hackathon.

  • Due to the anticipated volume of submissions, individual feedback will not be provided.

    Applicants should not expect detailed review comments or coaching during the concept note stage.

  • All concept notes will be reviewed through a structured assessment process.

    Submissions will undergo both AI-assisted screening and expert review before final shortlisting decisions are made, subject to organisers' discretion.

  • The organisers currently anticipate shortlisting approximately 30 teams for the Final Round.

    The final number will vary depending on the quality and diversity of submissions received and subject to organisers' discretion.

Hackathon - final round

  • Shortlisted participants will take part in a structured onboarding process, including:

    • platform access setup;

    • team confirmation and formation;

    • technical orientation;

    • governance and security briefings;

    • background checks where required;

    • and introductions to mentors and challenge leads.

  • Teams will build agentic AI prototypes addressing one of the problem spaces listed on the website.

  • Yes. Participants may receive access to synthetic datasets and supporting technical resources relevant to selected challenge areas.

    No real or personally identifiable customer data should be used.

  • Yes. All prototypes must include consideration of the below (amongst others):

    • Human-in-the-loop

    • Auditability & Traceability 

    • Safety & governance controls

    • Cyber risk

    Projects must also comply with all applicable governance, security, and synthetic data requirements.

  • Teams will be required to submit:

    • a 5-minute video demonstration showing final prototype;

    • supporting documentation & code;

    • presentation materials;

    • and evidence of governance, explainability, and safety controls.

    Further submission requirements will be shared during onboarding.

Technology & infrastructure

  • Teams may use a wide range of tools, models, frameworks, and infrastructure providers, subject to hackathon rules and security requirements.

    Additional technical guidance may be provided during onboarding.

  • Selected infrastructure, technical tooling, APIs, or platform support may be made available through hackathon sponsors and technology partners.

    Details will be shared with registered participants.

  • No but participants are encouraged to use open-source to support public-good reuse and cross-jurisdiction collaboration. 

  • Yes. By participating in the hackathon, participants grant Fii and relevant partners a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to review, evaluate, publish, demonstrate, and showcase submitted projects and related materials for purposes of running the competition, judging, and promoting the hackathon and its outcomes, including event reports, post-event summaries, and conference or academic presentations relating to the Hackathon outcomes, for a period of 24 months following the end of the Hackathon.

    This licence does not permit use in paid advertising, commercial endorsement, or co-branding without the participant’s prior consent.

    This may include team names, participant names, organisation names, project summaries, screenshots, demo recordings, and presentation materials, unless otherwise agreed in writing.

Intellectual property

  • Participants retain all IP rights in existing solutions and any outputs developed through participation in the Sprint. as well as any new work, code, ideas, or outputs created during the hackathon ("Foreground IP"), subject to any rights of their employer or other third parties. Further information available in the Terms & Conditions.

  • Yes. Participants may incorporate pre-existing tools, frameworks, models, or open-source components into their submissions, provided they:

    • have the right to use them,

    • comply with applicable licensing requirements,

    • and properly attribute third-party materials where necessary.

    Participants are responsible for ensuring that their submissions do not knowingly infringe the intellectual property rights of third parties.

  • No confidential supervisory information, classified materials, personal data, or proprietary datasets should be submitted unless explicitly authorised to do so by the owner of the dataset.

Demo day & live voting

  • Shortlisted teams will present their solutions to regulators, judges, and invited stakeholders.

    Presentations may include:

    • live demonstrations;

    • prototype walkthroughs;

    • question-and-answer sessions;

    • and discussions regarding implementation potential.

  • Yes. Selected demonstrations will be showcased to public authorities registering as Observers as part of a live voting process, subject to organisers' discretion.

    Further details will be provided closer to the event.

  • A short selection of solutions will be selected to present to an eminent panel of judges who will select the final 3 winning solutions.

  • Yes. Cash prizes will be available for individuals and will convert to equivalent funding for national authorities. Additional prizes will be available for teams that use https://vouch.finance/ to develop their solutions and the top 6 winning teams will be given 2 complimentary rockets to the Singapore Fintech Festival.

    Prizes are awarded gross and without deduction. Recipients are solely responsible for any tax obligations arising from the receipt of a prize, including any income tax, withholding tax, or reporting requirements in their country of residence. Participants are advised to seek independent tax advice in relation to their own circumstances. The Organisers do not provide tax guidance and accept no liability for any tax due by participants.

Judging & showcase

  • Projects will be assessed across several criteria, which can include the below subject to the organisers' discretion:

    • Public-sector utility
      How directly the prototype supports supervisory, policy, enforcement, or collaboration workflows.

    • Feasibility and operational realism
      Whether the solution can work within existing regulatory IT, legal, and governance environments.

    • Governance quality and explainability
      Whether the agent provides traceability, audit logs, rationale trails, and meaningful human oversight.

    • Trust, impact, and innovation
      Whether the prototype advances market integrity, fairness, consumer protection, resilience, and regulatory effectiveness

    Additional factors that can be assessed subject to organisers’ discretion include speed to market, scalability and governance quality.

  • Projects will be evaluated by a distinguished panel of regulators and policymakers, including governors and commissioners.

  • Subject to organisers’ discretion, selected finalists will:

    • be invited to present virtually at the C:\>DIR Annual Conference

    • participate in showcase events

    • enter incubation or accelerated tooling pathways

    • or contribute to future collaborative public-interest infrastructure initiatives

Registration & logistics

  • Participants can register through the official registration portal: https://www.cdir.global/cdir-hackathon

  • All applicants will be notified of whether they are selected or not.

  • Following registration, applications will be reviewed and participants selected to the Final Round will receive:

    • onboarding materials

    • access to technology platforms

    • invitations to preparatory sessions or workshops

  • Where possible, the organising team will try to accommodate changes during the onboarding process subject to organisers’ discretion but will not be able to accommodate when the Hackathon begins.

  • Yes. Technical and mentor workshops will be made available to participants on-line.

  • You can make a complaint via email at hackathon@cdir.global or send a letter to Fii C/O Birketts Llp, 22 Station Road, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, CB1 2JD.

Media, privacy & conduct

  • Some sessions, workshops, showcases, or presentations will be recorded, livestreamed, photographed, or documented for educational, promotional, research, and community purposes.

  • Sessions, workshops, showcases, and presentations will be recorded, livestreamed, photographed, or otherwise documented for educational, promotional, research, and community purposes.

    Participants may be included in such recordings. Separate consent will be obtained where required for the use of personal data, including images or audio of identifiable individuals, for promotional purposes.

  • Participant information will be used for hackathon administration, communications, and related programme activities in accordance with applicable privacy and data protection requirements. Personal data will be deleted 12 months after the Hackathon.

  • Yes. All participants are expected to contribute professionally, respectfully, collaboratively, and responsibly throughout the hackathon. Harassment, discrimination, misuse of systems, or unsafe behaviour will not be tolerated.

Terms and Conditions

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