QUANTUM AI HACKATHON - AI agents meet qubits, powered by XpyQ

Quantum AI Hackathon

Hedge Fund Applications — HFT, Mid-Frequency Trading & AI Foundation Models

Presented by Berkeley Gateway Accelerator, XpyQ, Oakland Hardware Meetup, and Informal Spaces:

PLEASE READ: As a PARTICIPANT, please register via Luma, a follow up survey will be sent. OBSERVERS also welcome!

📌 How to Secure Spot as a Participant requires two steps, both are required to be considered: 1️⃣ Apply on Luma to reserve your seat2️⃣ Fill out the follow up survey, so we can match you to the right track and teamSpots are limited to approx. 10 teams. Apply early.

Introduction

The next generation of quantitative finance isn't classical. U.S. quant funds posted their worst momentum selloff in three years in early 2026 — down 2.8% in two weeks. The quantum-AI risk hedge platform market is growing at 28.5% CAGR toward $10.71B by 2030, and the window to build domain expertise before institutional standardization closes in 2–3 years.

The Quantum AI Hackathon is an intensive weekend challenge assembling quant researchers, quantum algorithm engineers, ML practitioners, and AI model builders to prototype next-generation trading systems. Real quantum hardware credits. Live financial datasets. Four frontier tracks. Real baselines to beat. The best overall project takes home a $2,000 Grand Prize and a formal invite to the Awards Dinner.

At this event, participants will:

Prototype quantum-enhanced trading systems using IBM Quantum, IonQ, AWS Braket, and D-Wave hardware creditsFine-tune financial AI foundation models including Chronos, TimesFM, and Kronos on real market dataCompete across four tracks spanning HFT, mid-frequency alpha generation, risk & compliance, and AI foundation modelsPresent to a panel of hedge fund and quantum computing industry judgesNetwork with sponsors, investors, and peers at a formal awards dinner the following Wednesday

Note: Teams may self-pair or be matched from accepted-but-unmatched pool.

Who Is This For?

For Quant Researchers & Algorithmic Traders

Classical factor crowding is structurally fragile — quantum-enhanced strategies address regime failure from angles classical models can't reach. Build systems that outperform classical baselines on real metrics: Sharpe ratio, CVaR, information coefficient, and execution P&L.

Track 01 · High-Frequency Execution — QRL agents on live LOB data. Beat the LSTM/Transformer baseline.Track 02 · Mid-Frequency Alpha Generation — QAOA/VQE portfolio optimization across 50–500 assets. Beat Markowitz + CVXPY.Track 03 · Risk & Regulatory Compliance — Hybrid CVaR circuits + quantum Monte Carlo. Beat classical historical VaR.Track 04 · AI Foundation Models (cross-cutting) — Fine-tune Chronos, TimesFM, or Kronos, or deploy an agentic LLM pipeline. Beat zero-shot generic TSFMs.

For Quantum Engineers & ML Practitioners

Build hybrid quantum-classical systems against real financial data — not toy benchmarks. Full access to IBM Quantum (Heron chip), IonQ, AWS Braket, and D-Wave alongside PyTorch, JAX, LangChain, and LlamaIndex. Results judged by industry professionals who care about reproducible outcomes.

For Investors & Hedge Fund Guests

McKinsey estimates 50% of major financial institutions will deploy hybrid quantum trading systems by 2028. This event is a live preview of the teams building that future. Join as an observer, judge, or sponsor. The formal awards dinner the following Wednesday is designed to let industry guests engage with top teams on their own schedule.

Agenda

📍 Berkeley Gateway HQ — Downtown Berkeley

Prep Week — 7 Days Prior · Async via Slack

Monday — Market microstructure primer: LOB dynamics, tick data, order typesTuesday — Quantum computing primer: QAOA, VQE, QUBO, NISQ-era constraintsWednesday — AI foundation models for finance: Chronos, TimesFM, Kronos, fine-tuning vs. zero-shotThursday — Quantum ML: QRL, QSVM, VQC, quantum kernel methodsFriday — Dataset access, API keys (IBM Quantum, Alpaca, Polygon.io), track briefings

Arrive Saturday with environments configured and classical baselines already running.

Day 1 — Saturday · 9 AM – 9 PM · 12-Hour Build Sprint

9:00 AM — Doors Open. 10:00 AM — Opening keynote: Quantum + AI for Hedge Funds — The 2026 Landscape11:30 AM — Build Block 1: Core algorithm prototyping, quantum circuit design, model architecture1:30 PM — Lunch + mentor office hours2:00 PM — Build Block 2: Backtesting, benchmarking, hyperparameter tuning5:30 PM — Checkpoint demos (5 min per team, non-judged) + mentor feedback6:00 PM — Build Block 3: Integration, result validation, final documentation9:00 PM — Code freeze. All repositories locked.

Day 2 — Sunday · 9 AM – 12:30 PM · Presentations

9:00 AM — Doors Open, final submission upload + presentation setup10:30 AM — Team presentations: 10-min demo + 5-min judge Q&A per team12:00 PM — Judge deliberation (closed session)12:30 PM — Participants dismissed. Scores sealed until award dinner

Awards

🥇 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

Partner Organizations

Berkeley Gateway Accelerator — Venture accelerator focused on frontier capital and emerging deep tech technology commercialization, based in Downtown Berkeley.

XpyQ — Building next-generation quantum-AI infrastructure for quantitative finance applications.

Oakland Hardware Meetup — Community of hardware engineers, makers, and builders advancing hands-on technical collaboration across the Bay Area.

Informal Spaces — Flexible venue and community infrastructure for technical events, workshops, and collaborative builds.

Infrastructure

⚛️ Quantum Hardware & SDKs

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

🤖 AI & Foundation Models

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

📊 Classical ML & Data

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

⚡ Execution Simulation

Backtrader · Zipline-reloaded · Custom HFT sandbox

Prep materials distributed one week prior via Slack · IP participation agreement required at registration