Six cities. Six editions. After Berlin, London, NYC, SF, and Stockholm, the Global Finance Hackathon Tour landed in Helsinki last week. Home to startup mothership launcher SLUSH, saunas, and allegedly the happiest people in the world. 

Except, it turns out, finance leaders. 

There's a lot of pain in the bread and butter processes of running the money function at fast-moving companies. So we rocked up with local accounting powerhouse Greenstep and our long-time friends and customers Lovable, to help make Finland's finance teams as happy as the rest of their countryfolk.

What came out of the day? A VAT reclaim engine that could recover six figures across borders. A budget tool that benchmarks roles against live salary data before the offer goes out. An AI planner that takes finance out of the R&D loop entirely. And yes, a Space Invaders game that solved a data alignment problem. All built in a day, by CFOs, with zero engineering support. 

The room was packed well beyond what any health and safety officer would have approved, and nobody cared. Here's our rundown of the most crowded Finance Hackathon yet.

The day that was

Over 250 finance leaders, 70 teams, and some of the most recognised names in Nordic business, from Aiven and Supercell to eBrands, all under one roof at Greenstep HQ. Teams built against real problems from their own businesses using Lovable to vibe code and Light's demo account and live financial data as their foundation. No one wrote a line of code. That was the whole idea.

Why we do this

The finance function keeps businesses alive and yet, it’s the one most burdened by manual work. Admin, admin, admin.

We run these events because the fastest way to show someone what's possible is to put the tools in their hands. For many people in that room, this was the first time they'd vibe coded. The first time they realised they didn't need an engineer to fix a problem that's been on the backlog for two years. With these Hacks, we’re giving Finance their power back.

The five finalists

Lots of big hitters, but our experts marked their top five:

Epicenter: OneSource

Epicenter runs flexible workspaces across multiple markets. Finance and ops teams were pulling from different systems, working off different definitions, and nobody noticed until a board meeting went sideways. Their OneSource solution fixes it with a Space Invaders-style game where teams shoot their answers, see disagreements in real time, and walk out with a locked data contract in 20 minutes. Game over, admin.

Nanoform: AI Finance Planner

Nanoform is a Finnish drug particle engineering company whose R&D production planning routinely pulls finance into decisions that shouldn't need them. They built an AI planner that guides their team members through campaign planning step by step, catching incorrect inputs early, and then suggests cost optimisations based on real production constraints. It allows Finance teams to stay in the loop without having to do the schlep work. 

Clarvo: financial data hiring

Hiring budgets get set in January. By March, the market has moved. The CFO approved €65K; the market wants €78K, and nobody finds out until the offer stage. The Finance team at local AI hiring platform Clarvo connected Light directly to live salary market data, so the moment a role is budgeted, it's benchmarked against what it actually costs to hire. Bam. That’s a new feature for their product offering, right there.

Aiven: VAT-Radar

Aiven operates across multiple jurisdictions, which means a different set of VAT rules everywhere they do business – and that’s a headache. If you're spending €1M on eligible expenses and not claiming, that's roughly €200K off net profit. Their Hack build, VAT-Radar, automates invoice processing, pulls real-time tax rules across borders, and gives finance a chatbot-driven interface for deeper analysis.

Great Eight: retail traffic forecasting

How many people will walk through the door, and how do we staff for it? Great Eight built a forecasting tool that pulls in weather, public holidays, and local events to surface a traffic forecast with staffing and marketing recommendations. 

And the big winner… Nanoform! 

Why? The judging panel appreciated the team’s problem clarity, solution depth and ready usability of their Planner. It wasn’t a prototype, it was the real deal, supporting with production campaign planning in real time, catching errors before they compound, and removing finance from the comms loop on decisions that they’d rather be out of. 

What's next

We’ve recharged since last week, and are now ready to keep on keeping on. More hackathons, more cities, more partners. If you want to request a Finance Hackathon in your city, head to light.inc/finhack. Follow us on LinkedIn to be the first to know where we're headed next.

The finance function is changing. Come build it with us.