Hong Kong Hub for Apart Research's AI Collusion Sprint

Project Overview

Apart Research, together with Poseidon Research and AE Studio, is running a three-day sprint on collusion between AI agents, October 23-25, 2026.

Url: https://apartresearch.com/sprints/ai-collusion-research-sprint-2026-10-23-to-2026-10-25

This research sprint studies collusion between AI agents, in markets and in everyday agent deployments. Alongside engineers and researchers, the sprint is targeting top quantitative finance talent, so participants will likely be based in the world's top financial capitals.

Apart Research has already secured one in-person hub for the hackathon — the Collider in NYC.

In our meeting with Apart, they had expressed a desire to attract “cracked” finance talent from all over the world.

We at AI Safety HK (AISHK) support the vision behind this research sprint, and we have offered to expand its coverage to one of the world's most important financial centers.

Why an in-person hub in Hong Kong?

Hong Kong is an ideal in-person venue for this event.

• It is ranked 3rd on the Global Financial Centres Index, with the HK Financial Secretary recently having made an express ambition to take HK to 2nd rank within 15 years.

• Hong Kong has overtaken Switzerland as the world’s top cross-border wealth hub. and already serves as the hub for quantitative finance across the Asia-Pacific region.

• Many of the world’s top quantitative finance firms have offices in Hong Kong, and tapping into the talent of those firms would make this research sprint a much greater success.

Over the past few months since we commenced operations, AISHK has had significant success in fieldbuilding for AI safety. However, within our network, the vast majority of elite finance talent has had no opening into hands-on AI safety work. Most of these individuals are unlikely to participate in a team-based research sprint remotely, and would appreciate a physical space during the weekend to build and collaborate.

What we will do

AISHK has offered to assist Apart Research in creating a conducive environment for this talent to have their first practical engagement with AI safety.

We are submitting this grant application to secure accessible, comfortable in-person facilities  in Hong Kong, to create a good experience for the city’s top quants.

The minimum funding target would allow us to achieve this basic goal. It would cover advertising and outreach (this is particularly important given the tight timeline) as well as a suitable coworking space, facilities, and other resources needed to make the experience comfortable and productive for participants. This represents the minimum level of support required to host an in-person hub for a research sprint and attract top quants in Hong Kong.

Reaching the target level of funding would also allow us to deepen our collaboration with Apart Research, providing a pathway for promising participants to continue developing their research beyond the sprint.

We have secured in-principle agreement from Apart Research to provide HK’s top-performing team with their own research fellowship. Apart’s research fellowships can typically last 6+ months.

While Apart Research would be supplying the necessary mentorship, compute and other project-relevant infrastructure for the fellowship awardees, AISHK would provide the physical community infrastructure to keep the team motivated and supported during the fellowship. The requested target funding would be a necessary top-up to our pre-existing coworking-space budget which we secured in our previous grant application, and was initially intended to cover space for our core team only.

With the award of an Apart Fellowship for the top-performing local team, this additional financial support would allow us to accommodate the winning team within our workspace and give them a physical base from which to continue their work.

More broadly, it would also be an important first step towards our longer-term ambition of developing a Hong Kong-based hub for AI safety organisations and teams across the wider community.