A wearables hackathon, hosted by Vexo at Y Combinator
Build something
you can wear.
200 builders. 24 hours. One rule: it has to leave the screen.
- When
- Sat 8 Nov 2026, 24 hours
- Where
- Y Combinator, San Francisco
- Who
- 200 builders
- Cost
- Free
Y Combinator
The brief
Anything you can strap to a body.
The screen has had forty years. Build what comes after it.
- GlassesHeads-up, hands-free, no phone in the loop.
- RingsA sensor and a mic, worn all day, noticed by nobody.
- PatchesStuck to skin, reading something a wrist cannot.
- EarbudsAlways listening, always answering, never a screen.
- Anything elseIf it straps to a body and demos in 24 hours, it counts.
The day
- Sat 9:00Doors, coffee, team forming
- Sat 10:30Briefs and hardware handout
- Sat 11:00Build starts
- Sat 20:00Dinner and a check-in
- Sun 9:00Hands off keyboards
- Sun 10:00Demos, judging, prizes
Come build
200 spots. Free.
No hardware experience needed, no team needed. Apply by Friday 30 October 2026.
Sponsor it
No tiers. No price list.
OpenAI is in, 3 seats are open, and what we need is things rather than cheques. Each one gets a judging seat, a named track, and your logo on everything.
Dev kits to lend
Hardware in 200 builders' hands for 24 hours, returned at the end. Glasses, boards, sensors, anything a team can build against on the day.
An on-device or speech SDK
Wearables run at the edge. If you make inference, audio or speech work on small hardware, this is the room that needs it.
Prizes
A named track, judged by you, with something worth winning at the end of it.
Food, coffee, or the photographer
Two hundred people, overnight. Feeding them and documenting it are both real line items, and both get named credit.
Rather just write? Email us.