CA-XPRIZE
23.6.2021 19:32:08 CEST | Business Wire | Press release
XPRIZE , the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, and IBM Watson , IBM’s AI technology for business, today announced the Grand Prize Winner in the $5M IBM Watson AI XPRIZE Challenge . First launched in 2016, the five-year global competition looked to accelerate adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and spark creative, innovative and audacious demonstrations of the technology that are truly scalable to solve societal grand challenges.
Winning first place honors is Zzapp Malaria , in second place is Aifred Health , followed by Marinus Analytics . These finalists were selected out of a pool of 10 semifinalists following presentations of their solutions to a panel of judges during an event held at TED headquarters in New York City last year. A $3 million grand prize, $1 million second place prize, and $500k third place prize will be awarded to the teams. In total, over 150 teams throughout the world joined the competition.
"After five years of hard work and dedication, XPRIZE is thrilled to announce Zzapp Malaria as the grand prize winner of IBM Watson AI XPRIZE,” said Anousheh Ansari, CEO of XPRIZE. “Zzapp Malaria, Aifred Health and Marinus Analytics are on the forefront of AI advancement, and we are looking forward to seeing firsthand the positive impact they will have on our future.”
"Each of the three finalists of the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE showcase what's possible when the power of AI is used to address some of the world’s toughest challenges,” said Daniel Hernandez, General Manager, IBM Data and AI. “It’s inspiring to witness how the AI technologies we developed at IBM help these organizations realize and scale their good tech solutions to drive positive societal change.”
Based out of Tel Aviv, Israel, Zzapp Malaria is committed to malaria elimination. The team’s AI technology is geared towards tackling the main challenges faced by malaria elimination campaigns by creating custom models, built with tools like IBM Watson Studio for Cloud Pak for Data, to predict the number of small water bodies caused by weather, enabling it to optimize the timing for launching larviciding operations.
- Marinus Analytics (based out of Pittsburgh, PA): A woman-owned company founded in 2014 out of Carnegie Mellon Robotics that is driven by a single social mission: To fight human trafficking. Their solution, Traffic Jam, is a suite of analytics tools that saves hours and sometimes days of investigative time to find traffickers and recover victims by quickly turning big data into actionable intelligence. Marinus Analytics has used IBM Watson Discovery and IBM Watson Assistant to extend their Traffic Jam application, aiding investigation into financial fraud and the illicit flow of proceeds to international crime groups.
- Aifred Health (based out of Montreal, Canada): A digital health company focused on clinical decision support in mental health, starting with depression. The team’s solution uses AI to learn from thousands of patients to help tailor treatment, reducing the time it takes for a patient to reach remission. IBM Watson Health is providing Aifred Health with millions of records of observational depression data to improve their ML models.
To determine the winner, XPRIZE AI convened a global jury of representatives from around the world. The jury evaluated each team based on their performance in the following four dimensions: achieved technical impact, evidenced real-world impact, scalability of real-world impact, and ethics and safety.
The winning teams were announced today in partnership with WIRED during the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE’s AI For Good fireside chat featuring Anousheh Ansari, CEO of XPRIZE, and Seth Dobrin, IBM’s Chief AI Officer. The two discussed the challenge and the importance of AI for the future of humanity. As part of their partnership with WIRED, XPRIZE opened up a public vote for the Most Inspiring Team, and Zzapp Malaria was selected as the winner. You can watch the full fireside chat and view additional content via WIRED’s content hub linked here.
About XPRIZE
XPRIZE, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is the global leader in designing and implementing innovative competition models to solve the world’s grandest challenges. Active competitions include the $100M XPRIZE Carbon Removal, $15M XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion, $10 Million XPRIZE Rainforest, $10 Million ANA Avatar XPRIZE and $5 Million XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling. For more information, visit xprize.org.
About IBM Watson
Watson is IBM’s AI technology for business, helping organizations to better predict and shape future outcomes, automate complex processes, and optimize employees’ time. Watson has evolved from an IBM Research project, to experimentation, to a scaled, open set of products that run anywhere. With more than 40,000 client engagements, Watson is being applied by leading global brands across a variety of industries to transform how people work. To learn more, visit: https://www.ibm.com/watson .
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210623005848/en/
Link:
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Rubedo’s RLS-1496 Reduces Actinic Keratosis Pre-Cancerous Skin Lesions by 46% at Four Weeks with Minimal Irritation in Preliminary Results of Phase 1b/2a Study28.5.2026 14:30:00 CEST | Press release
RLS-1496 is an investigational, first-in-class, disease-modifying, selective glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4) modulator that targets pathologic senescent and other stressed, aging cells that drive chronic, age-dependent diseases, such as AK, and represents a novel drug category — Adaptive SenoTherapeutics In recognition of May as Skin Cancer Awareness Month, Rubedo is calling attention to the myths and facts surrounding AKs — and to the urgent need for a new generation of treatments that are effective without the side-effect burden of today's options Rubedo Life Sciences, Inc. (Rubedo), an AI-driven, clinical-stage biotech focused on selective cellular rejuvenation medicines targeting aging cells, today announced preliminary results from a Phase 1b/2a study of RLS-1496 in patients with actinic keratosis (AK), a common age-related condition resulting in precancerous skin lesions, that is most commonly seen after age 65.1 The open-label multi-center trial, conducted in the United States,
ExaGrid Wins 5 Industry Awards at Network Computing Awards 202628.5.2026 14:00:00 CEST | Press release
ExaGrid named “Company of the Year” for seventh year in a row ExaGrid®, the world’s largest independent backup storage vendor providing Tiered Backup Storage with the most Comprehensive Security and AI-Powered Retention Time-Lock for Ransomware Recovery, today announced that company was honored with five industry awards, including Air-gapped Ransomware Recovery Product of the Year, Bench Tested Product of the Year, Company of the Year, Data Protection Product of the Year, and the Storage Product of the Year during the Network Computing Awards ceremony, held in London on May 21, 2026. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260528849813/en/ The ExaGrid team headed to the stage five times throughout the Network Computing Awards ceremony in London to accept awards for ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage. Photo courtesy of Network Computing Awards. The Network Computing Awards are determined by public vote. The 2026 awards mark
Ardoq Launches AI-First Enterprise Architecture Platform28.5.2026 14:00:00 CEST | Press release
Custom Agents, Omnipresent AI Assistant, and AI Import Builder Automate an Estimated 40% of Routine EA Work; Tenneco Already Achieving 292% ROI on Ardoq AI Ardoq, named a 5x Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Architecture Tools, today launched its AI-first enterprise architecture (EA) platform. The release grounds every Ardoq AI output in customers' live architecture data and introduces a new generation of AI agents capable of automating an estimated 40% of routine EA work. Architects today are being asked to defend decisions that generic AI is generating in seconds. Application rationalization choices. ERP transformation roadmaps. AI governance reviews. The questions land on the architect's desk, but the analysis underneath increasingly comes from AI assistants that do not know the architecture. Generic agents reason on whatever document is in front of them, not on the live relationships between applications, dependencies, capabilities, and risks. Ask a generic LLM
European DataWarehouse Launches DealDox®, a Next-Generation Virtual Data Room Built specifically for the Securitisation Market28.5.2026 14:00:00 CEST | Press release
European DataWarehouse (EDW) announced today the launch of DealDox®, a secure virtual data room uniquely tailored to the needs of the securitisation and structured finance market. Developed in response to long‑standing challenges around transaction data and document management, DealDox provides a single, secure environment where all parties throughout the deal lifecycle can collaborate efficiently while maintaining high standards of security, governance, and regulatory alignment. DealDox enables the centralised management of transaction data and documentation, offering robust security, granular access controls, and clear audit trails. The platform integrates seamlessly with EDW’s existing regulatory reporting ecosystem, supporting smoother workflows from deal preparation through to disclosure and compliance. “As a market infrastructure, our role is to reduce complexity and make processes simpler and more transparent for all participants,” said Dr. Christian Thun, CEO of European DataWa
SLB and Vår Energi Expand Digital Collaboration to Scale Well and Integrated Field Development Planning28.5.2026 13:47:00 CEST | Press release
Agreement supports Vår Energi’s ambition to reduce time to first oil, building on multi-discipline, collaborative well planning workflows that reduce cycle times from months to days Global energy technology company SLB (NYSE: SLB) today announced an expanded collaboration with Vår Energi to scale well planning and integrated field development planning across its Norwegian Continental Shelf operations. With collaborative well planning already reducing cycle times from months to days and integrated field development planning expected to support similar benefits, the expanded deployment is designed to support faster, more consistent decision-making as operators work to sustain production from mature offshore assets while managing increasing development complexity. As part of the expanded collaboration, Vår Energi is deploying the Delfi™ digital platform to connect exploration, subsurface evaluation, well planning, subsea design, field development planning, and production in a cloud-native
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom