Tech Week LogoLos Angeles, October 12 - October 18
LA calendar

LA Tech Week 2026

Self-Improving Agents Hackathon

Hosted by USC Information Sciences Institute and University of Southern California (USC)

When
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Where
Marina del Rey
Format
Hackathon and Panel / Fireside Chat
Self-Improving Agents Hackathon artwork

/ About this event

Join GRAIL and 18VC at LA Tech Week for a hands-on hackathon focused on building recursive self-improving (RSI) agents. We’ll dig into agent loops, tool use, memory, evals, and automated improvement, then help you prototype systems that can learn from feedback and improve their own performance over time.

If you don’t already have agent infra, we’ve got you covered with access to our OpenClaw-based platform. Just bring yourself and your laptop, and build an AI employee for your startup, a research agent for your lab, a coding copilot that rewrites its own workflows, or an operations agent that gets sharper every time it runs.

The sky - and your imagination - is the limit! We'll have food, prize, social media promotion for your projects, and a great lineup of panelists.

The session will be led by Mayank Kejriwal, a Research Associate Professor in the University of Southern California’s Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and a Principal Scientist at the USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) https://isi.edu.

ISI is a co-host of the event. GRAIL is proud to support USC's corporate and foundations relations teams with its agentic forms & workflows product.

About 18VC:

18VC is a venture podcast and community documenting the next generation of founders before anyone else sees them. We tell the stories of student and young founders, researchers, and the investors betting on them at their earliest stage, when an episode is our check, and a conversation is our conviction. Beyond the mic, we host founder-heavy events across SF and LA, run original research on university entrepreneurial ecosystems, and connect founders in our network with investors.

If you're building something, come say hi, we're probably recording. You can find us at https://www.18-vc.com/.

See all USC ISI Tech Week events: https://linktr.ee/usc_isi

Location: USC, Information Sciences Institute Address: South Marina Tower, 4676 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, Ca 90292 Check in: 10th Floor

PARKING:

Recommended Marina Del Rey Lots, $6 per day/vehicle (5 - 10 minute walk): Lot 2 : 13477 Fiji Way, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292 https://maps.app.goo.gl/wKZUA81dbZSxcTeS9 Entrance on Fiji Way, exit on Mindanao Way.

Limited visitor parking at USC, ISI, $12:20 per hour, $29.30 per day/vehicle. We do not validate. Address: 4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey Ca 90292

Questions? Email us at events@isi.edu

This event is a part of #LATechWeek - a week of events hosted by VCs and startups to bring together the tech ecosystem

https://www.tech-week.com

/ Other events

Full schedule

/ Stay in the loop

Get the LA Tech Week schedule in your inbox

New events, featured picks and reminders, straight to your inbox.

Tech Week 2026

Questions? Email us at hello@tech-week.com

Download Media/Press KitJoin the a16z speedrun talent networkView Community GuidelinesAdd Tech Week to your AI assistant

Follow Our Socials