Global C:\>DIR Hackathon

Global C:\>DIR Hackathon

Agentic Regulator: Prototypes for public authorities to strengthen trust in an agentic financial system and digital economy
Virtual Format, Global  

The financial system is rapidly being disrupted by AI agents that automate decisions and execute increasingly complex, evolving workflows. While this drives innovation, it creates widening "trust fractures", from accountability gaps and risk of consumer harm to accelerating volatility and machine-speed mass market manipulation.

The C:\>DIR Global Virtual Hackathon seeks to build capabilities in 100+ public authorities globally, by collaboratively applying deep regulatory, policy and supervisory domain expertise to create prototype agentic workflows and applications with the support of top AI experts, engineers and researchers. The goal is to develop a suite of shared agentic prototypes to solve common challenges built within a secure, trusted environment - to reimagine and rapidly demonstrate how regulatory and oversight capabilities can evolve in tandem with agentic financial markets.

This program is designed for domain experts and decision-makers within:

  • Central Banks and Financial Regulators

  • Data Protection and Communications Authorities

  • Competition Regulators and Ministries of Finance

Teams taking part in the hackathon will build AI agents for real-world public-sector workflows, potentially focusing on:

  • Internal Intelligence: Automated policy drafting, Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), and explainability tools.

  • Regulatory processes: Agentic development of regulatory approaches, frameworks and innovation initiatives.

  • Market Supervision: Real-time anomaly detection, machine-speed fraud prevention, and bias monitoring.

  • Accountability & Safety: Agentic Identity (A-KYC), legal attribution tools, and audit trails.

  • Systemic Resilience: "Red Team" agents to stress-test private sector bots in reg sandboxes.

  • Interoperable Governance: Cross-agency data sharing and international reg mapping.

The 2026 Global C:\>DIR Hackathon will begin with kick-off and team matching in early July. Throughout July and August there will be an asynchronous build sprint, with weekly technical clinics. A live global pitch day will be held in September, will awards presented at the C:\>DIR Summit.

Submissions will be evaluated by an expert panel based on:

  • Public-Sector Utility: Direct support for supervisory or policy workflows.

  • Trust & Impact: Contributions to market integrity and consumer protection.

  • Governance Quality: Traceability and the robustness of human oversight.

  • Feasibility: Operational realism and pathways to actual deployment.

The winner of the hackathon will be announced at the annual C:\>DIR Summit, held in Cambridge on 18 September 2026.

Those wishing to participate are invited to express their interest by clicking here.