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
VeriSilicon Enhanced ISP8200-FS Series IP Achieves ASIL B Functional Safety Certification5.2.2026 01:00:00 CET | Press release
Enabling Next-Generation High-Performance Automotive Camera Systems VeriSilicon (688521.SH) today announced its latest enhanced versions of Image Signal Processing (ISP) IP ISP8200-FS series, ISP8200-ES and ISP8200L-ES, featuring improved performance and energy efficiency to better support complex automotive camera systems. These enhanced IPs have successfully achieved ISO 26262 ASIL B functional safety certifications issued by TÜV NORD, an international inspection and certification institution, further validating their suitability and reliability for ADAS and autonomous driving applications. The latest enhanced ISP8200-FS series IP can operate at up to 1.2 GHz and support data processing from up to 16 image sensors. It significantly improves the performance of multi-camera scheduling, enabling flexible data-access capabilities and efficient hardware pipeline utilization for automotive camera systems. The enhanced series IP integrates image processing technologies including Color Noise
Kinaxis Inc. to Host Fourth Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call on March 5, 20264.2.2026 22:30:00 CET | Press release
Kinaxis® Inc. (TSX:KXS), a global leader in supply chain orchestration, today announced that it has scheduled its conference call to discuss the financial results for its fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2025. The call will be hosted on Thursday, March 5 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time by Razat Gaurav, chief executive officer, and Blaine Fitzgerald, chief financial officer, followed by a question and answer period. The Company will report its financial results for the fourth quarter and year after the close of markets on Wednesday, March 4, 2026. CONFERENCE CALL DETAILS DATE: Thursday, March 5, 2026 TIME: 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time WEBCAST: https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/567578009 (available for three months) About Kinaxis Kinaxis is a leader in modern supply chain orchestration, powering complex global supply chains and supporting the people who manage them. Our powerful, AI-infused supply chain orchestration platform, Maestro, combines proprietary technologies and techniques that
Mainstay Medical Announces Exclusive Coverage of ReActiv8® by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota4.2.2026 22:30:00 CET | Press release
Mainstay Medical Holdings plc today announced that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota has established favorable coverage for the company’s ReActiv8 Restorative NeurostimulationTM therapy for the treatment of intractable chronic low back pain. The policy went into effect in January 2026 and specifies that ReActiv8 is the only therapy considered medically necessary by the policy when the conditions for coverage are met. “We are pleased that another Blue Cross Blue Shield payer has joined Anthem in making ReActiv8 available to well-selected patients after reviewing the large body of clinical evidence we have built,”said Jason Hannon, CEO of Mainstay Medical. “Patients with intractable chronic low back pain are desperately seeking durable solutions, and ReActiv8 has proven to be a safe and effective solution through six clinical studies with 633 patients treated and 1,950 patient-years of follow-up, including two multi-center, randomized controlled clinical studies. We look forward to
Multi-Color Corporation Receives Court Approval of First Day Motions4.2.2026 21:30:00 CET | Press release
Obtains Interim Approval to Access $125 Million of DIP FinancingGlobal Operations and Services to Customers Continue in Normal Course Without Interruption During Restructuring Process; All Trade Vendors and Suppliers to be Paid in Full Multi-Color Corporation (“MCC” or the “Company”), a global leader in prime label solutions, today announced that it has received approval from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey (the “Court”) for first day relief related to its prepackaged Chapter 11 filed on January 29, 2026. The approved relief affirms that the Company will operate in the normal course, pay all trade vendors and suppliers in full, and maintain a strong liquidity position during the restructuring. As part of this relief, the Court granted MCC immediate access to $125 million of $250 million in debtor-in-possession (“DIP”) new money financing, provided by certain holders of MCC’s secured first lien debt and its equity sponsor, CD&R. This funding will capitalize the
Andersen Consulting udvider med samarbejdsfirmaet Saratoga Software4.2.2026 18:43:00 CET | Pressemeddelelse
Andersen Consulting styrker sit udbud inden for digital transformation med tilføjelsen af samarbejdspartneren Saratoga Software, en leverandør af softwareleverancer og specialiserede teknologiløsninger. Saratoga Software blev grundlagt i 1998 og tilbyder virksomheder, især inden for den finansielle sektor og fintech-branchen, en omfattende række tjenester, herunder specialudviklede softwareløsninger, forretningsanalyse, platformsintegration og support, kvalitetssikring, projektledelse samt data engineering og business intelligence. Med kontorer i Sydafrika og Storbritannien specialiserer firmaet sig også i løsninger inden for ai og machine learning samt cloud-migrering, kundekommunikationsstyring og strategisk teknologirådgivning. "Vores team besidder dyb ingeniørfaglig ekspertise, anciennitet og en dokumenteret evne til at løse komplekse problemer – kvaliteter, der gør os til betroede rådgivere for vores kunder," udtalte Anthony Robinson, bestyrelsesformand for Saratoga Software. "At
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