HUD Frontier / RSI RL Environments Hackathon

🚨 IMPORTANT — Please sign up at https://events.ycombinator.com/hud-frontier-june-26 by Friday 17th June 11:59 PM PT. Applications submitted on Luma will NOT be reviewed or recognized.

HUD (W25) and YC are co-hosting the first RSI hackathon — a technical weekend focused on frontier RL environments, post-training datasets, evals, and RFT workflows. RL Environments are one of the best ways to improve frontier model capabilities.

The future is possible — we need to teach models how to get there.

Try to imagine what a world of 2040 looks like, then work backwards.

We want teams building environments and agents that push model capabilities in coding, ML research, robotics, manufacturing, gaming, agentic collaboration, and autonomous businesses. We encourage highly ambitious and creative projects: autonomous research, fully autonomous businesses, and physical real-life applications of autonomy (VLAs, robotics, manufacturing, etc.).

TL;DR: You can improve models at anything you can verify. The only question left to answer is: what will you teach them?

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🛠️ Who Should Apply

Techno-optimists, ML researchers, engineers, and anyone ambitious who wants to shape the future of models. You don't need previous RL experience.

🎯 Why Join

• Spend 24 hours collaborating and competing with top builders from across San Francisco and beyond
• Build SoTA agents, evals, and post-training data
• Learn and use Reinforcement Learning and Reinforcement Fine-Tuning
• Get hands-on with the latest tools from companies on the cutting edge
• Hear directly from industry leaders about what they're building and what they've learned

🏆 Prizes

• Grand Prize: Guaranteed YC interview for the next batch
• A robo-dog, Mac Minis, AirPods Max, AirPods Pro 3, gift cards, and more
• Sponsor API credits + swag for every participant

📅 Schedule

Saturday, June 20

• 11:00 AM — Doors open, lunch served
• 12:00 PM — Opening ceremony
• 12:30 PM — Hacking begins
• 6:30 PM — Dinner served
• Hacking continues overnight

Sunday, June 21

• 8:30 AM — Breakfast served
• 12:00 PM — Lunch served
• 1:30 PM — Hacking stops, judging begins
• 1:45 PM — Final presentations
• 2:45 PM — Prizes
• 3:30 PM — Event ends

🍴 Food

All meals catered on-site (breakfast, lunch, dinner) + coffee, snacks, and late-night fuel throughout. Dietary restrictions captured in the application — vegetarian, vegan, halal, and gluten-free covered.

🤝 Sponsors

• HUD: The platform to build RL Environments and agentic evaluations
• Y Combinator: Make something people want
• Anthropic: Frontier AI research and the Claude model family
• Google DeepMind: Google's world-leading AI research lab
• Modal: AI infrastructure for GPUs and sandboxes
• Fireworks AI: Build AI agents with fine-tuned open models
• Daytona: Secure development environment infrastructure and sandboxes for AI agents
• MiniMax: Frontier AI models for text, voice, video, and music generation
• Antim Labs: Simulation infrastructure for physical AI
• SixtyFour: AI agents for people and company research
• Exa: The web search API for AI
• Hillclimb: Training data for recursive self-improvement
• Protege: Unlocking access to rich real-world datasets for AI training