Hackathon: Build What's Next with PayPal and AI

The PayPal AI Hackathon is now live through Nov 12, 2026. Your chance to win a share of $60,000+ in prizes.

PayPal already moves money for millions of people and businesses, every day, all over the world. This hackathon is your chance to combine AI and PayPal into something new. AI is changing how people build, buy, sell, work, connect, and move money. Now it's your turn to imagine what comes next.

We didn't want to just hand you the API and wish you good luck. That's why we brought in partners offering free credits to help you build. Meet them below.

The challenge

Build What's Next with PayPal and AI is an online hackathon inviting developers, designers, founders, students, and builders from around the world to create something new using PayPal and AI.

There are no prescribed problem statements and no set of tracks. Build an agent, an app, an automation, a new payment experience, a business tool, a social product, or something that's your idea.

The only fundamental requirement: your project must meaningfully use both PayPal and AI.

Meet the partners

• APIMatic: Give your AI agent instant PayPal context with APIMatic's Context Plugin.
• Render: Deploy and orchestrate AI agents at scale with Render Workflows.
• Kernel: Cloud infrastructure so your AI agents can browse and act on the internet.
• Channel3: One API for clean product data across 100M+ items, no scraping.
• Postman: Design, test, and document your APIs on the platform developers already know.
• Astropods: Agent-native infrastructure to build, deploy, and run AI agents.
• Elastic: Fast hybrid and vector search, built for AI.
• AG Grid: Build self-serve dashboards, drag-and-drop charts, and an AI assistant, directly into your app with AG Studio from AG Grid.
• Bryntum: High-performance Gantt, Scheduler, Calendar, and Grid web components for React, Vue, and Angular.

Dates

• Oct 1, 2026 - Submissions open
• Nov 12, 2026 - Submissions close (6-week build window)
• Dec 21, 2026 - Winners announced

Prizes - $60,000+ USD in cash

• Best Overall: 1st ($12,000), 2nd ($8,000), 3rd ($5,000)
• Honorable Mentions ($5,000 each):
  • Most Creative
  • Most Impactful
  • Best Demo Delivery
  • Best Use of PayPal + AI
  • Best Use of Agentic Commerce
• Sponsor Bonus:
  • Best Use of AG Grid: 1st ($5,000), 2nd ($2,000), 3rd x3 ($1,000 each)
  • Best Use of APIMatic: x3 ($1,000 each)
  • Best Use of Bryntum: x3 ($1,000 each)
  • Best Use of Channel3: $1,500
  • Best Use of Render: 1st ($1,000 Render Credits), 2nd ($750 Render Credits), 3rd ($500 Render Credits)

Ready to build? Get started here.