Rainforest XPRIZE

Discover. Understand. Preserve.

$10 Million

Prize Purse

The $10M XPRIZE Rainforest is a five-year competition to enhance our understanding of the rainforest ecosystem.

Overview

Understanding Rainforests for

Impact

The XPRIZE Rainforest will accelerate the innovation of autonomous technologies needed for biodiversity assessment and will enhance our understanding of rainforest ecosystems by using rapid data integration to provide new wisdom about the forest as well as inspire new investment and exploration. The XPRIZE Rainforest will reveal the true potential of the standing forest, accelerating the development of new, just, and sustainable bioeconomies.

The XPRIZE Rainforest will revolutionize our understanding of the planet’s most diverse and complex ecosystems, rapidly and remotely quantifying their intrinsic value in unprecedented detail, in a time that has never been more urgent for conservation.

Peter Houlihan

Technical Lead, XPRIZE Rainforest

The XPRIZE Rainforest will revolutionize our understanding of the planet’s most diverse and complex ecosystems, rapidly and remotely quantifying their intrinsic value in unprecedented detail, in a time that has never been more urgent for conservation.

Peter Houlihan

Technical Lead, XPRIZE Rainforest

The Grand Challenge

Rainforests cover less than 10% of the earth's land surface, but they house approximately 50 million inhabitants and over 50% of the planet's biodiversity. Although they are the most biodiverse ecosystems, there is a limited knowledge of everything that lives in these iconic environments. The value of the standing trees are not fully understood and our ability to assess this value is restricted because the rainforest environment is dense, vast, and complex.

How to Win

The winning team will develop novel technologies to rapidly and comprehensively survey rainforest biodiversity and use that data to improve our understanding of this complex ecosystem.

How to Register

XPRIZE teams come from all around the world, in every shape and size. Teams can be comprised of university groups, high school students, startups and innovators, small to midsize companies, families or individuals. Registering to create or join a team, is one of the first steps you can take to help create a better future for all.

Register