Key Takeaways
- • Vista Equity Partners, the enterprise software investor with over $100 billion in AUM as of June 30, 2026, named winners of its 9th Annual North America and Global Hackathons, focused on agentic AI.
- • The two competitions brought together 59 teams and more than 275 participants from over 30 Vista portfolio companies, judged over 24-hour sessions in Scottsdale, Arizona and Bangalore, India.
- • Avalara took first place in North America with an eight-agent system automating VAT tax return filing, estimated at roughly 320 times cheaper than manual processing.
- • InvoiceCloud won first place in the Global Hackathon with a system estimated to cut average customer service resolution time from 3.4 days to about 1.2 hours.
- • Amazon Web Services, HCLTech and Dell Technologies sponsored the event, which included 16 students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Summary
Vista Equity Partners ("Vista"), a global technology investor specializing in enterprise software, announced the winners of its 9th Annual North America and Global Hackathons, according to a Business Wire release dated September 10, 2026. The competitions are intended to let developers and engineers across the Vista portfolio connect with peers and advance enterprise software solutions. This year's North American teams reimagined their companies as agentic AI native startups, rebuilding a core business function as a coordinated multi-agent system. Global teams engineered multi-agent systems for workflows they already run, designed to be reliable, include clear human checkpoints and guardrails, and be cost-effective enough for production.
Vista Founder, Chairman and CEO Robert F. Smith said the Hackathons showed "how quickly agentic AI is moving from an emerging technology to a defining force in enterprise software." The events brought together 59 teams and over 275 participants from more than 30 portfolio companies. Each competition was judged by a panel of Vista value creation and product and technology experts on innovation and originality, feasibility of productization and deployment, potential business impact, completeness of vision and clarity of presentation. The North America Hackathon included 16 students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities who worked alongside portfolio teams. Amazon Web Services, HCLTech and Dell Technologies served as sponsors.
In North America, Avalara placed first with an agentic solution automating VAT tax returns for online sellers, using eight coordinated agents with human sign-off required before submission; the team estimated it could file a return roughly 320 times more cheaply than manual processing. KnowBe4 placed second with an agent that tailors security training based on employee behavior, resolving 96% of decisions without human effort according to the team's estimate. InvoiceCloud was third with an eight-agent payment portal setup for small billers, sizing the opportunity at over 500,000 unserved billers. Duck Creek Technologies received an honorable mention for a tool converting legal insurance rate filings into pricing software.
In the Global Hackathon, InvoiceCloud took first place with a customer service routing system that the team estimated could cut average resolution time from 3.4 days to about 1.2 hours. Infoblox placed second with a four-agent network alert triage system, and Sonatype was third with an automated customer-bug resolution workflow that opens pull requests for human review without merging code automatically. PowerSchool received an honorable mention for an agent estimated to shrink Curriculum & Instruction go-live timelines from 8 to 12 weeks to two days. Vista described itself as applying two decades of software investing expertise to AI, with further information at vistaequitypartners.com.
Vista Founder, Chairman and CEO Robert F. Smith said the Hackathons showed "how quickly agentic AI is moving from an emerging technology to a defining force in enterprise software." The events brought together 59 teams and over 275 participants from more than 30 portfolio companies. Each competition was judged by a panel of Vista value creation and product and technology experts on innovation and originality, feasibility of productization and deployment, potential business impact, completeness of vision and clarity of presentation. The North America Hackathon included 16 students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities who worked alongside portfolio teams. Amazon Web Services, HCLTech and Dell Technologies served as sponsors.
In North America, Avalara placed first with an agentic solution automating VAT tax returns for online sellers, using eight coordinated agents with human sign-off required before submission; the team estimated it could file a return roughly 320 times more cheaply than manual processing. KnowBe4 placed second with an agent that tailors security training based on employee behavior, resolving 96% of decisions without human effort according to the team's estimate. InvoiceCloud was third with an eight-agent payment portal setup for small billers, sizing the opportunity at over 500,000 unserved billers. Duck Creek Technologies received an honorable mention for a tool converting legal insurance rate filings into pricing software.
In the Global Hackathon, InvoiceCloud took first place with a customer service routing system that the team estimated could cut average resolution time from 3.4 days to about 1.2 hours. Infoblox placed second with a four-agent network alert triage system, and Sonatype was third with an automated customer-bug resolution workflow that opens pull requests for human review without merging code automatically. PowerSchool received an honorable mention for an agent estimated to shrink Curriculum & Instruction go-live timelines from 8 to 12 weeks to two days. Vista described itself as applying two decades of software investing expertise to AI, with further information at vistaequitypartners.com.
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