Epsilon’s annual global hackathon, Hack to the Future, brought together over 1,200 passionate participants across 200+ teams in Q2 2025 for an intense two-day sprint to reimagine what’s possible for our products and platforms.
From offices in Bangalore, Boston, Brisbane, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Irving, London, San Diego, Wakefield, and Westminster, including the remote locations across the globe, teams united to tackle real-world challenges with creativity, curiosity, and a shared sense of purpose.
This year’s hackathon focused on three strategic challenge areas:
The 2025 edition welcomed several first-time participants from the Analytics, Campaigns, CJ, and HR teams who brought in fresh perspectives and diverse problem-solving approaches to the table. As one member of the HR Hackers team shared:
“Participating in our first-ever hackathon was an incredibly energizing experience. It pushed us beyond our day-to-day roles, challenged us to think creatively, and gave us the opportunity to collaborate in exciting new ways to solve a real business challenge.”
This milestone marked a meaningful step towards making innovation truly cross-functional at Epsilon, where every team, regardless of function, is empowered to shape the future.
Co-sponsored by Amazon Web Services, the hackathon provided participants with access to AWS environments to help bring their ideas to life. Mentors from both Epsilon and AWS were available throughout the event, supporting teams with technical guidance, brainstorming support, and real-time problem solving.
A participant from the Epsilon Multi-Agent Platform team added,
“Beyond skill-building, we left with meaningful connections and ideas that will shape our roadmap. We’re now building a fully bundled AI solution with organization-wide impact—an idea that originated from conversations sparked during the hackathon. For anyone passionate about pushing the frontiers of technology, this event is truly a catalyst.”
Over the two days, teams submitted video presentations, mock-ups, and prototypes for evaluation. Soon after, eight finalist teams were shortlisted to present live to a panel of judges.
The winning team was Team AI Alchemists, comprising Diptee Raut, Chaitanya Bijawe, Narayanan Ravindran, Lakshmi Kuchipudi, and Chelsea Zerrenner. Their innovative solution focused on optimizing Databricks usage to drive potential cost savings. By leveraging AI to process historical data, the team developed a model that recommends the most efficient instance types and node configurations based on specific jobs and workstreams. With a clear roadmap for future development, the solution is designed to become self-improving over time. This makes it a standout example of scalable, high-impact innovation.
Our in-office hackathon event continues to be a celebration of creativity, problem-solving, and cross-functional collaboration. This year’s Hack to the Future reaffirmed what’s possible when teams across time zones, disciplines, and backgrounds come together to build the future, one bold idea at a time.
Interested in joining our team? Check out our career opportunities here.
