XPRIZE

#ClimateWeekNYC is a moment to take stock of where progress is happening, and where we need to move faster. At the Impact Hub New York Metropolitan Area, XPRIZE spent a full day exploring that question across five conversations focused on some of the biggest challenges standing between today’s breakthroughs and a more abundant, equitable future. The conversations spanned water and soil ecosystems, super pollutants and near-term warming, energy abundance, and critical mineral circularity needed to power the clean energy and digital transition. Different challenges, but a common thread: breakthrough technology is only part of the equation. These conversations highlighted the need for: 🌎 Markets, measurement systems, and pathways that can help promising solutions scale. 💡 Ambitious, measurable goals that give innovators a clear target and create urgency around solving problems that markets alone may not address quickly enough. 🤝 Partnerships and capital to take solutions beyond demonstration and into the real world. “XPRIZE understands that the scale and urgency of the challenges ahead require us to pursue breakthroughs on many fronts at once. At Climate Week NYC, we used the Impact Hub to bring together experts from across energy, climate, and nature to help shape competitions, markets, and pathways that can move solutions forward faster. I am certain that the technologies, talent, and ideas needed to solve our most pressing global challenges exist, and I am optimistic about our future. Our role at XPRIZE is to create ambitious finish lines and build the coalitions that can organize innovation around the world’s biggest challenges and scale solutions for impact.” – David Babson, PhD, XPRIZE EVP, Energy + Climate + Nature “XPRIZE came to Climate Week NYC, with our partner Xylem, to engage global experts in water at The Impact Hub. We’re taking those insights, ideas, and debates back to inform the next XPRIZE in Food + Water + Waste. Our prizes demand proof: teams must demonstrate innovation in real time, and rewards recognize demonstrated success, not past accomplishments. XPRIZE does not retain IP, the new tech stays with the teams. The next generation of breakthroughs are around the corner and we were grateful to join and facilitate many exciting discussions about water, waste, and regenerative agriculture. The focus was on what we are doing right now and how we can scale together, in partnership.” - Lauren Greenlee, PhD, XPRIZE EVP, Food + Water + Waste Want to get involved in XPRIZE’s work? Learn more here. https://xprize.org cc: Frances Tran, Ryan Chaban

Last week, during UNGA and Climate Week in New York, we announced a new collaboration with The Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative, Dalio Philanthropies, and XPRIZE. Water is finally moving toward the center of conversations about climate, food, energy, access, ecosystems, and economic growth. For those of us who have worked in this field for a long time, that shift is overdue. It also changes what's possible for Imagine H2O. Over 17 years and 270+ startups, we've learned that finding promising technologies is only part of the equation. The harder work follows: proving solutions in the field, finding the right customers, reducing technical and commercial risk, and turning an early deployment into something repeatable. Scale gets the headlines and the capital, but adoption is what makes scale possible. That gap between a working solution and its widespread use is where we operate. This partnership extends that work to a new group of innovators tackling water scarcity. We'll work with selected teams from the XPRIZE Water Scarcity competition and the Al Miyah Challenge to move their solutions from promising results to commercial adoption. Thank you to Ray Dalio and the Dalio Philanthropies team, Ayesha Al Ateeqi and the MBZWI team, and our partners at XPRIZE for their ambition and their trust in us. And thanks to the entrepreneurs, operators, funders, team members, and investors in our community who have helped us reach this milestone. More to come. #ClimateWeekNYC #MohamedBinZayedWI #XPRIZEWaterScarcity #WaterInnovation #UNGA81

Registration for the 2026 Global Visioneering Summit closes on Oct. 1 at 11:59pm PT! Learn more about what you can look forward to at the event in the latest edition of The XChange below. ⬇️ Plus... 🔥 Introducing the #XPRIZEWildfire Awardees! Learn more about their work. 🖥️ Get an inside look at the XPRIZE #QuantumApplications Team Summit, which took place at the XPRIZE Canada Hub at the University of Calgary ✖️Meet Olga B., XPRIZE Director, Strategic Philanthropy Deep Tech + Exploration, who is helping bring to bring to life new prize competitions in this focus area. ...and more! Subscribe to The XChange newsletter here on LinkedIn or on XPRIZE.org to have it delivered to your inbox every month: https://lnkd.in/gZRVq-ms

Reverse osmosis is already a cornerstone of modern desalination. The opportunity now is to rethink what’s happening inside the system. That’s where these four #XPRIZEWaterScarcity Track A Semifinalists are focusing their efforts. ➡️ Smarter membrane designs could help improve system efficiency. ➡️ Innovations such as printed spacers can improve how water flows across membranes. ➡️ Data-driven system design can help components work together more effectively. The impact of improvements like these can extend well beyond a single component, potentially reducing energy use and operating costs, improving system performance, and making seawater desalination more accessible. Meet Active Membranes, Aqua Membranes, Inc., Aquatrino, Inc., and DESAL4ALL, four teams exploring new ways to improve efficiency at the heart of desalination. These teams are part of a cohort of 21 Track A Semifinalist Teams heading into semifinals testing, where they aim to prove their systems can work at pilot scale. Each team must run a fully integrated desalination system continuously for four weeks, producing 100,000 liters of clean water per day. Learn more about these Semifinalist Teams’ approaches here. https://lnkd.in/dC8r35mW XPRIZE Water Scarcity is made possible thanks to the generous support of Title Sponsor The Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative. cc: ACCIONA, Lauren Greenlee, David Locke, Hossein D. Atoufi, PhD, PE, Laika de los Santos, Sarah Miguel, Elizabeth Guyman Vautour (she/her)

What can builders create when AI is the foundation, not just a feature? After 26,000+ people registered from around the world, the Build with Gemini XPRIZE has its winners. Announced at Moonshots LIVE in Los Angeles, POLYFORK by Lucas Martinic took the top spot and a $500,000 grand prize. 🏆 Over 90 days, builders were challenged to launch a clean-sheet, revenue-generating business powered by AI. Their projects were evaluated across business viability, AI-native operations, and category impact. POLYFORK sells 3D models as programs rather than fixed assets, so users can resize, recolor, and remix them before downloading. An AI-agent factory publishes more than 175 a week, and the catalogue of 583 models generated $4,428 from 54 paying customers in its first month. The other finalists also took home awards: ➡️ Second place: TICIAN CIERRE by José Edgar Peña Ramírez — $200,000 ➡️ Third place: MYFIXAM by Jane Chukwuyem Odum — $100,000 ➡️ Fourth place: LAUNCHBRIDGE by Chase Rosen — $100,000 ➡️ Fifth place: DODOPREP by Naveed Ahmed — $100,000 The competition also recognized standout ideas across five categories, awarding $50,000 prizes for projects advancing education and human potential, entrepreneurship and job creation, small business services, financial access, and professional services access. And as AI agents increasingly become part of how businesses operate, the $50,000 Agentic Economy Prize, powered by Circle, went to MERGEGATE by Heartlin Machado. Congratulations to Lucas Martinic, POLYFORK, and all of the builders who turned ambitious ideas into working businesses. Learn more here. https://lnkd.in/gWg4Y-ZH cc: Peter H. Diamandis, Anousheh Ansari

What does a future worth building actually look like? The Future Vision XPRIZE set out to explore that question through the power of storytelling, and after more than 2,500 submissions, we now have our grand prize winner, announced at the Moonshots LIVE event. 🎬 THE GIFTED by Jeff Synthesized took home the $2.5 million equity investment toward production, along with $100,000 for screenplay development to have their vision turned into a full-length feature, with support from Range Media Partners and Google’s 100 ZEROS initiative. THE GIFTED captures the spirit of the Future Vision XPRIZE: using science fiction not simply to imagine what technology could do, but to ask what kind of future we actually want to create. Four runner-up films each received $100,000 in cash, plus featured promotion and visibility with Hollywood producers and Google teams. ➡️ Second place - NOBODY DIES ON MARS by Verena Puhm ➡️ Third place - THORNE PROTOCOL by J. Ryan Williams ➡️ Fourth place - SENTI by Isen Robbins ➡️ Fifth place - SLINGSHOT by Hal Watmough And audiences had their say, too. THE GIFTED also received the $50,000 top prize in the SPECS Audience Choice Award, selected through public voting. The Future Vision XPRIZE asked filmmakers to do something powerful: imagine futures that are worth aspiring toward. Congratulations to Jeff Synthesized and all of the filmmakers who helped bring those futures to our screens. Learn more here. https://lnkd.in/gHPVSNzB cc: Peter H. Diamandis, Anousheh Ansari

What a way to end climate week and celebrate the awardees of the XPRIZE Wildfire competition!! XPRIZE Wildfire, sponsors, teams, partners, family and friends were with us today to ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange! Congrats teams!! Anduril Industries Dryad Networks AuraForesight SIRIUS Wildfire Alliance Snuffed DeepFire Mayday.ai GmbH MyRadar Thank you to our sponsors for their support to make the competition possible. Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Pacific Gas and Electric Company Minderoo Foundation Lockheed Martin Conrad N. Hilton Foundation American Family Insurance Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited COSTA NAVARINO The Roddenberry Foundation and our benefactors.

How do we help promising water technologies move from competition to real-world adoption? 💧 We’re proud to join #XPRIZEWaterScarcity Title Sponsor The Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative, along with Dalio Philanthropies and Imagine H2O, to connect XPRIZE Water Scarcity innovators with commercialization support, technical assistance, pilot opportunities, and ecosystem partners to help bring solutions to market and scale. Learn more here. https://lnkd.in/gF3epXYy