| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Name | Field | Cash value of prizes available (USD) | Awarded for | Year established (* = one-time award) | Entrants | Information about the winners | Other information about the prize, capital mobilized, etc. | |
2 | American Express Members Project | Any innovation | $2,500,000 | Any innovative, achievable, positive impact project proposed by members | 2007 | Open to all American Express cardmembers | This news release described a few of the longlisted projects that were performing well at the time the piece was written. First place at the time was seeking early treatment for Alzheimer's; second place was "social investing," though the website today looks more like just a loan. It is unclear who eventually won in the 2008 version. Another project listed was "funding school lunches" for children in India, and providing American children with books/supplies/technologies needed for education. Unfortunately all links are defunct. It also discussed the 2007 winner, which "involved providing clean drinking water to children across the developing world," operationalized by UNICEF. | Advisory panel of experts came up with top 25 list, with winner chosen by cardmember votes | |
3 | America’s Space Prize | Space | $50,000,000 | Design, build, and flight of a reusable, manned space capsule | 2004* | no details found | The prize expired January 10, 2010, without a winner or any test flights attempted. | 40 companies had expressed interest, but either did not have the money that would apparently be needed, or, in the case of SpaceX, were ineligible due to having accepted government funding | |
4 | Android Developer Challenge | Technology | $10,000,000 (split between ADC 1 and ADC 2) | Mobile applications that use the Android Software Development Kit | 2007 | 1,788 entries | Top 50 list here. More details on those projects here. Unclear who won the top prize. | $275,000 1st prize, $100,000 2nd prize. Each of the top 50 who made it to the second round received a $25,000 award to fund further development. | |
5 | ADC2 | 2008 | Winners were: SweetDreams, What the Doodle!? and WaveSecure | Ten specified categories for entrants. Round 1 was a public vote for the top 20 in each category. Round 2 used the same method for ranking constituting 40% of the final points, with the remaining 60% coming from a judging panel. 1st/2nd/3rd prizes were awarded in each of the categories. | |||||
6 | Android Developer Challenge (2019) | 2019 | List of winners here. | The prize pool was notably changed to either a Google Pixel 5 or electronic gift card of the same value ($699). Hard to evaluate quality of apps but that's a prize pool value equivalent of $7,000. The combined value of the original ADCs from 2007-2008 would have to be more than 1,000 times the 2019 one to justify the same spending in prize pool. | |||||
7 | Ansari X Prize | Aviation and Outer Space | $10,000,000 | Construction and launch of a privately funded reusable spacecraft | 1996* | 26 | Curiously, teams may willingly spend many times over on R&D what they hope to take home in prize money. During the original Ansari X Prize, 26 teams collectively spent more than $100 million in pursuit of the $10 million purse. The winning team alone spent more than double the purse. "Burt Rutan thought he could do it for $10 million or less," says Diamandis, "and it cost him $26 million." (source) | ||
8 | Archon Genomics X Prize | Medicine | $10,000,000 | Reaching targets for high speed and low cost in genome sequencing | 2006* | 2 | cancelled | "XPrize Senior Director Grant Campany says the fact that only two competitors signed up suggested that the $10 million prize wasn't a sufficient incentive for sequencing companies, which are already making hundreds of millions of dollars, to invest their R&D funds in the challenge". Risks of cancelling large scale prizes are also relevant: Church, who says he's spent "embarrassing" amounts of money to prepare ("with quite a lot to show for it," he adds), calls the decision "a totally avoidable slap at innovators." He disagrees that two contestants wasn't enough—only two teams compete in the Super Bowl, he points out. He also questions the argument that companies were getting there anyway. "Is this going to be standard XPRIZE policy—to cancel if there is too much progress—at the last minute?" (source) | |
9 | Automotive X Prize | Transportation | 10,000,000 (divided) | "inspire a new generation of super-efficient vehicles that help break" America's addiction to oil and stem the effects of climate change. (source) | 2010* | 111 registered teams with 136 vehicles 43 teams with 53 vehicles (Qualifying Stage) 24 teams with 36 vehicles (Shakedown Stage) 21 teams (Knockout Stage) 12 teams with 15 vehicles (Finalists) 7 teams with 9 vehicles (Validation) | Team Edison2 won the $5 million Mainstream competition with its four-passenger Very Light Car, obtaining 102.5 MPGe or just below 69 MPG running on E85 fuel. (target for prize was 100 MPGe). Team Li-Ion Motors won the $2.5 million Alternative Side-by-Side competition with their aerodynamic Wave-II electric vehicle achieving 187 MPGe. Team X-Tracer Switzerland won the $2.5 million Alternative Tandem competition with their 205.3 MPGe faired electric motorcycle. | With the lack of mainstream entrants from established automobile companies, a Demonstration Division was created so that automakers could at least display and promote their highest efficiency vehicles alongside the main competition. However, there were too few entrants by 1 March registration deadline, and this division was canceled. The only confirmed entrant was the Tesla Roadster, which had dropped out of the main competition (source). Interesting to note that the winning team was formed just to win the prize: https://edison2motors.com/ . The CEO still lists Edison2 on his LinkedIn work, but a link previously titled "Next Plans" does not exist, so it is unclear what Edison2 are doing now beyond a generic message saying that they are working on "taking the Very Light Car from a competition prototype to a safe, affordable, comfortable car of unprecedented efficiency." | |
10 | Beal Conjecture and Prize | Mathematics | $1,000,000 | Solve the Beal conjecture | 1997 (unclaimed) | Ongoing, unclaimed | |||
11 | Brain Preservation Technology Prize | Medicine | $100,000 | rigorously demonstrate a surgical technique capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term (>100 years) storage with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remains intact and traceable using today’s electron microscopic (EM) imaging techniques. | 2010* | 21st Century Medicine won both small and large mammalian brain preservation | Partly funded by LW users | ||
12 | Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prizes (also L-Prize) | Energy | $10,000,000 | Energy efficient lamps | 2007 | Phillips LED lamp with 83% energy saving compared to a 60-watt incandescent bulb. Apparently, "although the subsidized price was expected to be $22 in the first year, $15 in the second and $8 in the third, the bulb was initially selling for $50–60 (without rebates) as of July 2012." (source) Despite selling out, the bulb has been discontinued (unsure when or why) | Run by the US Department of Energy. Included partnerships for prizewinners to allow easier transition to market | ||
13 | L-Prize - Solid State Lighting (2021) | Energy | $10,000,000 | Better LEDs: "to combine high efficiency with exceptional lighting quality, data-driven control and functionality, and innovative design, construction, and grid flexibility" | 2021 | Ongoing | Phase 1 winners | Run by the US Department of Energy. Split into concept/prototype/manufacturing phases. | |
14 | Buckminster Fuller Challenge | Technology | $100,000 | Solving humanity's most pressing problems while enhancing the Earth's ecological integrity | 2008 | 2017 winner: Bhungroo. Featured at COP20 as a winner of the "Women for Results" category | Aside from the winner, each year the Fuller Challenge program awarded resources and support to an additional 40–60 projects through our Catalyst Program. These projects typically represented the top 20% of the entry pool and received opportunities for additional funding and investment, pro-bono legal services, fast-track access to accelerator programs, mentorship opportunities, and international press coverage. (source) | ||
15 | 2016 winner: The Rainforest Solutions Project. A conservation effort for the Great Bear Rainforest. Their website has been minimally active since 2017 | ||||||||
16 | 2015 winner: Greenwave. Design of the world’s first multi-species 3D ocean farms | ||||||||
17 | 2014 winner: Living Breakwaters. Has seen significant delays. Recent feature in The Guardian on 22 March 2022 suggests it is still ongoing. | ||||||||
18 | 2013 winner: Ecovative. Subsequently received $9.1 million contract from DARPA | ||||||||
19 | 2012 winner: The Living Building Challenge (also a finalist in 2010). A sustainable building certification program by International Living Future Institute | ||||||||
20 | 2011 winner: Blue Ventures. Their work is about designing and creating sustainable fisheries for purposes of marine conservation. They seem to be active and growing. | ||||||||
21 | 2010 winner: Operation Hope. Aims to reverse desertification and turns grassland into pasture. It is unclear if they are still currently functional, no website. The founder has another website that references winning the Fuller Challenge though. | ||||||||
22 | 2009 winner: MIT Smart Cities group. Mobility-on-Demand system of shared-use lightweight electric vehicles (EVs) placed at automatic charging racks throughout a city. | ||||||||
23 | 2008 winner: Comprehensive Design for a Carbon Neutral World | ||||||||
24 | Budweiser Cup | Aviation | $1,000,000 | First nonstop balloon circumnavigation | 1997* | Breitling Orbiter 3 | At least 5 other ballooning teams | ||
25 | Cheap Access to Space Prize | Space | $250,000 | Launching a 2-kilogram payload to an altitude of 200 kilometers | 1997* | Minimal details found | |||
26 | China Energy Efficient Refrigerators Project | Energy | $150,000 | 2000 | The project has received Global Environment Facility grants totaling US$9,860,000, leveraged by over $31 million in other funding. List of project participants are on page 2 of this pdf. Page 5 onwards covers various project results. | ||||
27 | Clay Millennium Challenges | Mathematics | $7,000,000 | Seven specific math problems | 2000* | Perelman declined the prize money associated with solving the Poincaré conjecture. The rest of the problems remain unsolved. | |||
28 | Clear Prize for Faster Airport Security Technology | Aviation | Unknown | Major reductions in airport security clearance time | 2007 | Minimal details outside of this. Clear committed to buying the technology from winners as well as providing the cash prize. | |||
29 | DARPA Grand Challenge - 2018 Launch Challenge | Transport | $10,000,000 for 1st prize $9,000,000 for 2nd prize $8,000,000 for 3rd prize | The goal of the DARPA Launch Challenge is to demonstrate responsive and flexible space launch capabilities from the burgeoning industry of small launch providers. The challenge will culminate in two separate launch competitions to low Earth orbit (LEO) within days of each other at different locations. (source) | 2018* | Unclaimed | Virgin Orbit, Vector Launch and Astra were the three finalists. "In the autumn of 2019, both Vector and Virgin dropped out of the competition, Vector because of financial problems and Virgin because it wanted to focus on other customers than DARPA. The final remaining team, Astra, attempted to launch their Astra Rocket 3.0 for the Challenge from Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska in late February and early March 2020, but several launch attempts were all called off due to weather and technical difficulties" (source) | ||
30 | Egg-Tech Prize | Agriculture | $6,000,000 | Improve early detection of a chick’s sex during the egg production process | 2021 | Partly funded by Open Philanthropy. 6 phase 1 prizes totalling $2 million awarded. Phase 2 still ongoing. | |||
31 | Feynman Grand Prize | Nanotechnology | $250,000 | Create both a nanoscale robotic arm capable of precise positional control, and a nanoscale 8-bit adder, conforming to given specifications | 1993 | Apparently unclaimed (p. 3) | Foresight Prizes are ongoing (although the link to the Grand prize no longer works), but the Challenge Prize appears to be unclaimed, at least as of 2016. | ||
32 | Global Security Challenge | Technology | $500,000 | The Global Security Challenge runs international business plan competitions to find and select the most promising security technology startups in the world (source) | 2006 | Past winners: GSC finalists and winners from the last three annual competitions have subsequently raised over $117 million in new venture funding and grants. The top-selected startups also have secured large contracts with government clients, such as the US Department of Energy, the US Navy, and the US Department of Defense, and with industry behemoths, such as Siemens and Bayer AG from Germany. Notable acquisitions: a regional finalist TenCube was acquired by McAfee, and the cyber 2009 winner Ksplice was acquired by Oracle. | |||
33 | Google Lunar X PRIZE | Aviation and Outer Space | $30,000,000 | Landing a privately funded lunar rover on the Moon | 2007* | List of competing teams; compilation on Wikipedia | $20 million grand prize, $5 million 2nd place prize, $5 million in bonus prizes, $1 million Diversity Prize, $5.25 million Terrestrial Milestone prizes awarded in 2012, $4.75 million In-Space Milestone prizes. Unawarded but continued as a non-cash prize in 2018. In 2019, SpaceIL received $1 million Moonshot Award for touching the surface of the Moon. | ||
34 | Howard Hughes Medical Institute | Biomedical | ~$1,000,000 per investigator per year | Biomedical research | Unknown, though this source suggests at least 1986 | Full list here. Alumni list here. List of 30+ Nobel laureates here | Unrestricted / no-strings-attached funding | ||
35 | Knight News Challenge | Literature | $5,000,000 | Ideas for innovating digital news | 2008 | Over 5 years: 12,000 applications, 76 projects funded for $27 million | Summary/media release of a report on the impacts of the Knight News Challenge (could not find original report). Previously ran once a year, but changed to be run three times a year due to perceived length of innovation cycle. An earlier evaluation here, though it isn't very useful. | ||
36 | Kremer prize | Aviation | ~£320,000 | Various aviation targets | 1959-1984 | Disregarded due to age | |||
37 | MacArthur Fellows | Arts/Music | $12,500,000 | Genius grant offered with few restrictions | 1981 | No entrants, only anonymous nominations | List of winners | No strings attached, ~$625,000 per year, with 20-30 winners per year. "The fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential." A review of MacArthur impact here. | |
38 | NASA Centennial Challenge | Space | $500,000 to 5,000,000 | New solutions to specific technical problems of interest to NASA | 2005 | Full list of previous challenges here. | |||
39 | NASA Green Flight Challenge | Aviation | $1,470,000 | Fuel-effecient aircraft | 2005* | 13 original registered teams | Pipistrel USA.com team led by Langelaan LLC of State College, Pennsylvania | 1st place $1,350,000, 2nd place $120,000 | |
40 | NASA Strong Tether Challenge | Space | $2,000,000 | High strength-to-weight ratio cables | 2005 | None | Unclaimed despite five years of competition | ||
41 | NASA Power Beaming Challenge | Space | $2,000,000 | Wireless power transmission | 2005 | LaserMotive LLC was awarded $900,000 in the 2009 Power Beaming Challenge. No other winners listed | |||
42 | NASA Cube Quest Challenge | Space | $5,500,000 | Designing, building, and delivering small flight-qualified satellites capable of advanced operations near and beyond the Moon. | 2015 | Website defunct. | |||
43 | NASA Deep Space Food Challenge | Space | $1,000,000 | Create a food production technology, system, or approach that could potentially be integrated into a complete food system to sustain a crew of four on a three-year deep space mission | 2021 | Phase 1 winners | $450,000 for Phase 1. $1 million for Phase 2 | ||
44 | NASA 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge | Space, Housing | $2,000,000 | Advance the construction technology needed to create sustainable housing solutions for Earth and beyond | 2015 | AI SpaceFactory. This source suggests $700,000 in final phase instead of $2 million as per NASA site | 3 phases: $40,000 for Phase 1, $700,000 for Phase 2, $2 million for Phase 3. | ||
45 | NASA Break the Ice Lunar Challenge | Space | $5,000,000 | Design a system for excavating and delivering icy regolith in extreme lunar environments. | 2020 | "Redwire Space, headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, won first place and $125,000 for its proposed two-rover system designed for simplicity and robustness. The company’s Lunar Regolith Excavator (L-Rex) would excavate large amounts of icy regolith. A versatile, low-mass transportation rover called Lunar Transporter (L-Tran) would be responsible for deploying the excavator and delivering regolith and ice." (source) | $500,000 in Phase 1 awarded. Planning $4.5 million for Phase 2 | ||
46 | NASA Astronaut Glove Challenge | Space | $350,000 | Improvements to glove design that reduce the effort needed to perform tasks in space and improve the durability of the glove. | 2007 | "Peter Homer of Southwest Harbor, Maine won the first place prize of $250,000" "In the 2007 challenge, Peter Homer won the prize of $200,000. Mr. Homer is an engineer from Maine. Since the competition, Mr. Homer has started his own company to produce spacesuit gloves." (source) | $250,000 to 1st place, $100,000 to 2nd place | ||
47 | NASA Moon Regolith Oxygen Challenge | Space | $250,000 | For the MoonROx challenge, teams must develop hardware within mass and power limits that can extract at least five kilograms of breathable oxygen from simulated lunar soil during an eight-hour period | 2005 | None, expired 2009 | |||
48 | NASA Night Rover Challenge | Space | $1,500,000 | Build a solar-powered robot which can operate on stored energy for a significant portion of time. The intent is to spur development of extreme environment battery technology for use in space missions. | 2010 | None | Closed in 2013 | ||
49 | NASA Vascular Tissue Challenge | Medicine | $500,000 | Successfully create a thick, metabolically functional human vascularized organ tissue in a controlled laboratory environment. | 2020 | 19 teams across the country registered for team trials | |||
50 | NASA Watts on the Moon Challenge | Space, Energy | $5,000,000 | Ideas for sustainable energy storage, distribution, and management on the lunar surface. | 2020 | Phase 1 winners. Phase 2 ongoing | |||
51 | NASA Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge | Space | $2,000,000 | Deliver a payload to Earth orbit, complete at least one orbit past the launch site and do so successfully at least two times in one week. | 2010 | Likely defunct/closed, no details found online | |||
52 | NASA Space Robotics Challenge | Space | $1,000,000 | advance robotic software and autonomous capabilities for space exploration missions on the surface of extraterrestrial objects via software simulations | Phase 1 winners. Phase 2 winners | ~300k in phase 1 and ~500k in phase 2 awarded | |||
53 | NASA Sample Return Robot Challenge | Space | $1,500,000 | Developing some of the key technologies that will make it possible to integrate unmanned aerial vehicles into the National Airspace System | 2010 | Takes a stage 1 --> stage 2 approach for prize pools. This stage 1 seemed to be a multi-year process. Largest prize awarded was $750,000 | |||
54 | NASA Unmanned Aircraft Systems Airspace Operations Challenge | Space | $500,000 | Development of technologies that may reduce the technical challenges of safely operating autonomous unmanned aircraft systems in commercial airspace. | 2013 | Cancelled due to unanticipated technical and operational issues as well as additional costs. Initially planned for $500,000 in phase 1, with possibility of $1 million in phase 2. | |||
55 | NASA CO2 Conversion Challenge | Space | $1,000,000 | Convert carbon dioxide into sugars such as glucose as a step to creating mission-critical resources. | 2018 | Three phase 2 winners, to split the $650,000 evenly | |||
56 | NASA Lunar Lander Challenge | Aviation and Outer Space | Up to $1,000,000 | Launch a vertical takeoff/vertical landing rocket that allowed a vehicle to move between the surface of the Moon and its orbit | 2006 | Lots of info summarised here | |||
57 | Packard Fellowships | Science | $17,500,000 | Early-career science and engineering professors | 1998 | $875,000 per person | No strings attached | ||
58 | Prize4Life | Medicine | Up to $1,000,000 | Medical discoveries that remove the largest barriers to finding a cure for ALS | 2007 | Likely defunct, USA assets transferred to Israeli branch. | |||
59 | Saltire Prize | Climate, Environment, Energy | £10,000,000 | Innovation in marine renewable energy | 2007 | Not awarded | |||
60 | Siebel Energy Free Home Challenge | Climate, Environment, Energy | $20,000,000 | Designing a house that achieves net-zero renewable energy consumption | 2008 | Very minimal info outside of this. Website defunct | |||
61 | Tricorder X Prize | Medicine | $10,000,000 | Creating a mobile device that can "diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians" | 2012 | Final Frontier Medical Devices | Originally offered a $7 million grand prize, $2 million 2nd prize, and $1 million 3rd prize. In reality: $2.6 million to winner (Final Frontier Medical Devices), $1 million to 2nd place (Dynamical Biomarkers Group). Portion of remaining prize pool re-routed toward additional product refinement, regulatory approvals and market development ($5.4 million) | ||
62 | PETA In Vitro Meat Challenge | Biotechnology | $1,000,000 | Ways to produce meat in the laboratory without killing any animals | 2008 | No winner emerged, prize pool not paid out | |||
63 | Virgin Earth Challenge | Climate, Environment, Energy | $25,000,000 | Commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases | 2007 | ||||
64 | Longitude Prize | Antimicrobial resistance | £8,000,000 | Development of an affordable, accurate, and fast point-of-care test for bacterial infection | 2012 | Ongoing | Ongoing | ||
65 | Methuselah Mouse Prize | Anti-aging | Started at $1,400,000; grew to at least $4,500,000 prize pool, but unsure exact awarded amount | "one to the research team that broke the world record for the oldest-ever mouse; and one to the team that developed the most successful late-onset rejuvenation strategy." | 2003 | Stephen Spindler won the rejuvenation prize; Dr. Andrzej Bartke won the first Mouse prize | Participants who beat the previous record holder can win the prize as well | ||
66 | H-Prize | Energy | Four prizes of up to $1,000,000, awarded every two years; One prize of up to $4,000,000, awarded every two years; and a $10,000,000 grand prize, awarded only once during the program. | “intended to encourage research into the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier in a hydrogen economy” | 2008-2017* | SimpleFUEL was the winner. | H-Prize final report. as something: you hesitated earlier haaha | ||
67 | GE Ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid | Energy | $55,000,000 split between 12 winners | Energy efficiency: renewable energy, grid efficiency and ecohomes/eco-building | 2010 | 3,500+ | Summary of the 12 winners here | ||
68 | Netflix Prize | Technology | $1,000,000 grand prize, annual $50,000 progress prizes | The best collaborative filtering algorithm to predict user ratings for films | 2006* | 34,000 entrants from 70 countries (McKinsey, 2009 p22) | the grand prize of US$1,000,000 was given to the BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos team which bested Netflix's own algorithm for predicting ratings by 10.06% | One-off |