What happens when some of the world’s biggest scientific and engineering challenges become competitions?
That is the idea behind XPRIZE, known for its global competitions tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges
For Cambridge Science Park member Cambridge Consultants, that makes its new strategic collaboration with XPRIZE particularly significant.
XPRIZE has launched 30 competitions involving more than 35,000 innovators across 173 countries. The organisation says its competitions have deployed $519 million in prize capital and generated $31 billion in measurable economic and social value.
Rather than simply rewarding a winning idea, XPRIZE competitions are designed to prove what is possible. Teams are challenged to demonstrate that their solutions can work, with funding, testing, assessment and validation helping promising technologies progress towards real world deployment.
Cambridge Consultants will now bring its deep technical expertise into this process.
Its global team of more than 750 scientists, engineers, technologists and designers will support XPRIZE across the competition lifecycle, helping to shape challenges, develop assessment methodologies and provide testing, engineering and validation expertise.
The relationship is already producing results.
For XPRIZE Rainforest, Cambridge Consultants’ AI experts developed a framework for assessing competing AI systems against factors including robustness, reliability, scalability and innovation. The technology was being developed to survey 100 hectares of tropical rainforest in just 24 hours and produce real time insights within 48 hours.
The new collaboration builds on this work, with future opportunities spanning major challenges including AI, energy and climate.
For Cambridge Consultants, it is an opportunity to apply its deep technical expertise at global scale, helping XPRIZE push ambitious ideas closer to becoming solutions that can make a measurable difference.