On July 19th , Formula E and Google Cloud broke a Guinness World Records™ title for the most participants in a generative AI hackathon. 1,130 attendees tackled real life challenges, such as developing an AI system to identify on-track incidents quickly and alert race control.

The AI hackathon provided participants the opportunity to leverage Google Cloud’s AI tools — Vertex AI and Gemini 1.5 Flash — to tackle these challenges. Teams collaborated to explore Formula E and Google Cloud’s innovations, while gaining insights from their experts during talks and interactive breakout sessions.

We provided participants with access to raw data from various aspects of Formula E (including video and car telemetry data) — allowing them to use tools to learn patterns and do their own exploratory work to validate it.

With 60% of participants not having direct skills in AI, the hackathon was about bridging this gap and demonstrating the practical, real-world capabilities of generative AI, encouraging participants to think creatively about future possibilities in motorsports and beyond.

8 hours later…

The winning Ancoris team built and demoed an amazing Vertex Agent which tranformed a two-hour race description into a two minute summary podcast. Not only did it summarise the race (in any language required) but it set the scene for the next race, by enriching the LLM with driver and future events data.

In addition, the Ancoris team completed two other challenges which earned them a special mention from Jeff Dodds, CEO, Formula E, who judged the panel along with others including Eric Ernst, VP Technology at Formula E, and Enrique Rodriguez, CTO at Liberty Global.

The 1,130 participants also got up close to the final pre-race preparations of the 11 world-class racing teams, including the likes of Jaguar TCS Racing, NEOM McLaren and TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E, during pitlane tours and watching the series’ final practice session before the race.

According to Eric Ernst, VP of Technology at Formula E, the event was all about giving a diverse range of participants an opportunity to engage with AI technology and live race data in a high-stakes environment, aiming to establish Formula E as the world’s most innovative and fastest-accelerating sport.