Anyway CEO Jims Young Judges Imperial College's High Stakes AI Agent Hackathon

LONDON and SAN FRANCISCO, March 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The energy was palpable at Imperial College London last week as Anyway CEO Jims Young (Mengqi Yang) joined the UK AI Agent Hack Ep4 x OpenClaw judging panel. Students raced to build production-ready, multi-agents systems for the infrastructure, digital health, social interaction, and financial automation sectors.

On the Opening Conference alone, this hackathon had keynotes and fireside chats between Peter Steinberger, Founder of OpenClaw and Thomas Wolf, Co-Founder of Hugging Face, panels with Partners from Ada Ventures, EWOR, and Fabric Ventures, a conversation with Simon Squibb.

The week-long event, held from March 1 to March 7, brought together developers of production-oriented AI agents focused on financial coordination, automation, and operational infrastructure for autonomous systems. Teams were evaluated on technical execution, product quality, real-world applicability, and long-term impact.

Scaling for Real-world Application 

The event highlighted that moving beyond the lab requires a robust framework that accounts for visibility, costs and debugging. Drawing on his experiences including a stint in venture investment, Young highlighted the practical hurdles of scaling that determine whether an emerging technology can successfully bridge the gap to become a sustainable product.

"What I saw were teams building sophisticated prototypes but then hitting a wall when moving toward production," Young said. "It is one thing to make an agent that works in a demonstration; it is quite another to keep it running reliably while managing costs and coordinating tangible outcomes."

Notable Projects from Hackathon

Several projects demonstrated the shift toward operational maturity. ContentPilot integrated Anyway's observability tools to further enhance visibility into agent performance and spend. The system traces each LLM call across workflows, allowing developers to inspect usage, latency, and execution paths across complex pipelines.

In the digital health space, KrumpPhysio, showcased its physiotherapy coaching agent capable of analyzing user movement and providing training feedback. The system combines agent interaction with real-time analysis and session-based services, illustrating how AI agents can support emerging digital health applications.

The hackathon also featured experimental applications such as WAR ROOM, a crisis-response simulation platform where multiple AI advisors help users navigate complex decision-making. Another featured application was WhoWins, a real-time debate platform that uses AI to analyze live conversations and generate structured reports on argument strength.

About Jims Young

Jim brings over five years of experience in the payments industry. He started at Airwallex, building its company card business from the ground up (0–1). He later joined venture capital as a investor, where he gained firsthand insight into the operational and scalability challenges AI agents encounter as they move from controlled environments into real-world deployment.

About Anyway

Anyway is a financial OS for AI agents, enabling developers to monetize agent outcomes and capture real economic value. The Anyway SDK delivers AI observability, cost tracking, and improved monetization for LLM applications.

SOURCE Anyway