Shengkun Ye@Shengkun

Atlas is a deep research agent designed to solve a fundamental limitation of today’s AI systems: high-quality information is often locked behind paywalls, subscriptions, or premium APIs. Instead of relying solely on free or preloaded data, Atlas can independently decide when paid data is necessary to improve research outcomes. Given a user query, Atlas identifies information gaps, evaluates whether premium sources would materially increase answer quality, and autonomously accesses those sources within predefined budgets and policies. The acquired data is then integrated into a multi-step research and reasoning process to produce more accurate, trustworthy, and well-supported answers. By treating data access and payment as first-class agent actions, Atlas enables a new class of agentic research workflows. Agents are no longer limited by what is freely available online, but can actively invest in better information to think deeper and deliver higher-confidence results.

In this hybrid hackathon powered by Arc, developers will build the next generation of agentic commerce systems using Arc with USDC. Explore a world where AI agents and web services can pay for APIs, data, compute, and content in dynamic, usage-based ways, while Arc provides stablecoin-native settlement with predictable USDC fees and deterministic, sub-second finality. This hackathon is supported by Google & Google DeepMind, with a dedicated challenge and $40,000 in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) credits awarded for the best use of Gemini models and Google AI Studio. 📅 January 9 – 24, 2026 • Jan 9 – 23 (Online Phase) – Collaborate and build online with developers and AI innovators from around the world. All projects must be submitted by the end of the online phase on January 23rd. • Jan 23 (On‑site Build Day – San Francisco, CA) – Selected participants will be invited to an exclusive in‑person session to refine their projects and connect directly with mentors. • Jan 24 (On‑site Demos & Awards – San Francisco, CA) – Live pitching sessions to a panel of judges and ecosystem partners, followed by the official winner announcement. Get guidance from Arc and Circle experts through on-site support. 📍 On-site Venue (Jan 23–24): MindsDB SF AI Collective 3154 17th St, San Francisco, California, USA 🤝 Go solo or team up, it's your flow. 🏆Compete for $50,000 in USDC & GCP Credits. 📍 On-site participation is by invitation only. Travel and accommodation expenses will not be covered. 🧑🏻‍💻 Secure your spot now - sign up before the Kick-Off Stream!