CA-XPRIZE
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
Synthio Labs Raises $5 Million to Build the Voice AI Operating System for Life Sciences Customer Engagement19.11.2025 16:00:00 CET | Press release
Synthio Labs, a clinical-grade voice AI company transforming how life sciences organisations engage clinicians and patients, today announced that it has raised $5 million in seed funding. The round was led by Elevation Capital with participation from 1984 Ventures, Peak XV Partners, Y Combinator, and several strategic angels from the global healthcare and AI ecosystem. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251119509940/en/ Rajashekar Vasantha (left), Supreet Deshpande (center), and Sahitya Sridhar (right), the founding team behind Synthio Labs’ voice-powered AI platform for pharma “We believe Synthio Labs is defining the next major Customer Engagement infrastructure for Life Sciences. Their Clinical-grade Voice AI platform unifies how pharma communicates - giving field teams a powerful voice companion, and giving physicians and patients instant, trusted, compliant answers 24/7. Pharma’s global Commercial and GTM foo
Torq Crushes EMEA Estimates With Record-Breaking Q3, Hitting 185% of Quarterly Target19.11.2025 15:00:00 CET | Press release
Torq Achieves 284%EMEA Customer Growth As It Signs Iconic Enterprises Including Virgin Atlantic, Kyocera, Siemens, and Zara Torq, the autonomous security operations leader, today announced it has exceeded Q3 EMEA revenue estimates, achieving 185% of its quarterly target. Torq is now firmly established as EMEA’s autonomous security operations platform of choice as enterprise goliaths continue joining its customer ranks, including Virgin Atlantic, Kyocera, Siemens, and Zara. Torq’s EMEA headcount grew 400% across 2025 to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand. “As worldwide momentum accelerates, Torq is doubling down on its EMEA investment by expanding operations, growing regional leadership, and strengthening our on-the-ground presence to fuel our next stage of growth,” said Ofer Smadari, CEO and co-founder, Torq. “Torq is now trusted by many of the world’s largest brands inside some of the most complex and sophisticated security operations centers. With new expansion into Germ
iConnections Launches Pipelines: A Powerful New Way for LPs and GPs to Turn Connections Into Real Momentum19.11.2025 15:00:00 CET | Press release
iConnections, the leading network for allocators and fund managers, today announced the launch of Pipelines, a new productivity and relationship-management tool built directly into the platform. Pipelines gives LPs and GPs a structured, visual, and purpose-built way to organize their outreach, nurture relationships, and drive their fundraising or investment processes forward—without relying on fragmented spreadsheets or generic CRMs. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251119021208/en/ Born from extensive feedback across the alternative investment ecosystem, Pipelines is designed to solve a common industry challenge: after a productive event or outreach cycle, promising conversations often lose momentum because there is no simple, tailored way to track next steps. “With Pipelines, users finally have a workflow that matches the way this industry actually operates,” said Douglas Melchior, VP of Product at iConnectio
Xsolla Releases “The Xsolla Report: State of Play Q3 2025 Edition, Vol. 8,” Delivering Clear, Data-Led Insights for Game Developers19.11.2025 15:00:00 CET | Press release
Report Unpacks Regional Trends Across China, Europe, and MENA to Inform Growth, Monetization, and Player Engagement Strategies Xsolla, a global video game commerce company that helps developers launch, grow, and monetize their products, today announces the release of The Xsolla Report: State of Play Q3 2025 Edition, Vol. 8, a comprehensive analysis of market forces shaping the games industry. The report synthesizes the latest data and expert perspectives to help developers and publishers plan for sustainable growth across platforms and regions. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251119397781/en/ Graphic: Xsolla As developers navigate new distribution models and evolving monetization approaches, the Q3 2025 edition offers a practical perspective on where the market is heading. The global player base is projected to reach 3.6 billion by year-end, with revenue on track to reach $188.8 billion—driven by steady moment
PicSee Launches the World’s First Social Platform That Helps You Get All Your Photos from Friends19.11.2025 15:00:00 CET | Press release
Built on Mutual Photo Sharing and Powered by AI PicSee, a new kind of social platform, announced its global launch - introducing a revolutionary way for friends and family to reconnect through photos. Built on mutual photo sharing and powered by AI, PicSee helps users automatically get all their photos from friends by giving them theirs - without ever uploading them to the cloud. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251112904808/en/ PicSee App - Home Screen Every year, trillions of photos are captured but rarely shared with the friends in them. PicSee changes that. Using on-device facial recognition and a patent-pending “give to get” system, the app automatically identifies which photos belong to whom and helps friends exchange them securely with a single tap. PicSee scans a user’s gallery, recognizes faces, and generates a personalized invite such as: “I have 75 of your pics. Come get them on PicSee.” Once two fri
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