XPRIZE Foundation

Offers XPRIZE Foundation, a United States nonprofit creating incentive competitions for ambitious social and technology challenges.

XPRIZE Foundation is a US nonprofit foundation founded in 1996 by Peter H. Diamandis. It designs and runs incentive prize competitions across health, climate, energy, water, learning, and exploration. The record attributes 30 competitions, 35,000+ innovators from 173 countries, $519 million in prize capital, and an estimated $31 billion in economic and social value to its work.

Its funding instrument is prize capital, not grants. Awards are paid when teams clear technical milestones or finish as winners, and each competition is backed by named sponsors rather than a general grant pool. Current programs in the record include Healthspan, Water Scarcity, Wildfire, Quantum Applications, Rainforest, Carbon Removal, Future Vision, Ovarian Health, and Critical Minerals, with top awards ranging from $2.6 million to $101 million depending on the challenge.

XPRIZE is strongest for teams that can prove a technical advance inside a public competition. Its model rewards measurable performance, global participation, and sponsor-backed challenge design rather than open-ended project support. For founders and researchers, the practical path is to compete for a defined prize with a clear test, a credible milestone plan, and a result that can be verified in the open.