Latest news with #XPRIZE
Daily Maverick
5 days ago
- Business
- Daily Maverick
Avoiding Day Zero in Gauteng — a comparison with Cape Town's success story
The phrase 'Day Zero' has come to mean that precise moment when a city's water supply is predicted to be depleted, leaving taps dry and local economies in crisis. It entered the global lexicon in 2018 when the City of Cape Town was confronted with an acute water crisis. The actual Day Zero was estimated to be in April that year, with three different dates, depending on the models being used. With a population of more than four million people requiring water, the city's executives were forced to implement strict water reductions on the public and corporations in the city. With these severe water restrictions, the city was able to replenish its water resources and it announced that 'Day Zero' had been averted. That single event captured the attention of the global media, which ran stories in many countries. It has now triggered the XPRIZE after the Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative offered a $119-million cash incentive to radically alter the future role of desalination technology solutions. Cape Town managed to avert its Day Zero crisis through an aggressive review and application of innovative policy, supported by intensive communication designed to build consensus, retain social cohesion in times of crisis and change human behaviour. But trust in the government was eroded and is unfortunately still in deficit, as is manifested by the festering issue of sewage discharge into aquatic ecosystems. Analysis of this strategy has shown that water security requires a mix of solutions, with no single silver bullet being viable. A water secure Gauteng These lessons have been fed into the Platform for a Water Secure Gauteng (PWSG), which has been created to avoid Day Zero in the heart of the South African economy. A lot of the energy that fuelled the Day Zero narrative was hype, and the one lesson that I have learnt from three decades in the international water sector is the role of nuance in every water-related problem. In short, things are always different in various geographic locations, so I have become sceptical of simple silver-bullet solutions, often touted by over-enthusiastic solution-providers that seldom understand the complexity of the problem being managed. It therefore becomes instructive to compare the differences and similarities between Cape Town's and Gauteng's Day Zero narratives. Facts are our friends, so let us embrace a few of the most important ones. For starters, both the Western Cape and Gauteng regions are supported by a complex arrangement of institutions, dams, pumps and pipelines, so that is a good point of departure. The Western Cape Water Supply System (WCWSS) stores 890 MCM (million cubic metres), which is two years of average water supply needed for the city of Cape Town and the local economy. There are several dams, including Theewaterskloof, Voëlvlei, Berg River, Wemmershoek, Rockview, Kogelberg and Steenbras Upper and Lower, some of which are interconnected by pipelines, tunnels and distribution networks. The rainfall is naturally a winter event, so storage is needed for the long summer months. Water is cascaded into this system through a series of inter-basin transfers from an adjacent water management area. Now let us compare this with the Integrated Vaal River System that sustains 45% of the South African population and 60% of the national economy. There are a total of 14 major dams, with the most important shown in the diagram, which also indicates the depth of each and the degree of interconnectedness across the whole system. It is managed as a single entity and it has a total storage capacity of 10,554 MCM (million cubic metres), which is about six years of average supply under non-drought conditions. Water is sourced from many different river basins, including the Tugela in KZN and the Malibamat'so in Lesotho. This water is diverted over the Drakensberg Mountains into the Sterkfontein Dam in the case of the Tugela. The energy needed to pump these massive volumes uphill is taken from the Eskom grid as part of a pumped storage scheme needed to put electricity back into the grid during peak energy demand. This problem is solved in the transfer of water from the Katse Dam in Lesotho, where the Muela power plant generates electricity using the constant natural flow of the system. When comparing the two systems, achieving water security in Gauteng is significantly more complex than in Cape Town. This highlights the challenge faced by the respective water boards in each case. Rand Water is one of the largest bulk water suppliers in the world, responsible for guaranteeing water security for almost half the population and two-thirds of the national economy. The challenge in Cape Town is defined by the limited strategic storage of two years. Cape Town is on the coast, so sea water desalination at utility scale (bigger than 50 megalitres per day capacity) is the obvious long-term solution, along with the recovery of water from waste. Both options are part of its strategic plan to achieve water security, with the latter being implemented in a groundwater recharge programme, like the city of Perth. The challenge is restoring public trust and investor confidence damaged by the Day Zero crisis in 2018, but exacerbated by the city's response to public concerns over sewage discharges into aquatic systems such as Milnerton Lagoon. Gauteng's complex challenge The challenge in Gauteng is different and more complex, so Rand Water will be confronted by demands on its decision-making capacity on an unprecedented scale. I have previously written about the sewage challenge (see Understanding the sewage challenge facing Gauteng's water supply), suggesting that Rand Water might have to start considering the recovery of water from waste to achieve two outcomes – mitigate the risk of sewage pollution of the Vaal and augmentation of supply to industrial users that might not need potable water for their processes. Gauteng will also be forced to consider the desalination of acid mine water, and this is where their challenge differs from Cape Town. About 200 megalitres of water can be recovered from acid mine drainage, but the Capex cost will be in the vicinity of R15-billion, with an annual Opex cost of around R2.5-billion. Those are big numbers for a relatively small increase in supply. Furthermore, the disposal of brine is not possible on the Highveld as there is no sea into which it can be discharged. For this reason, desalination is likely to remain non-viable for Rand Water. The good news is that the salinity levels of acid mine water being discharged into rivers is slowly declining, which adds value to the decision not to desalinate. The important take-home message is that maintaining water security in Gauteng will place growing demands on Rand Water in a manner unparalleled by any other water board in South Africa. Its institutional architecture will have to adapt to new business models capable of responding to a set of challenges that will increasingly differ from what it has faced in the past century of its existence. The institutional health of Rand Water will be of increasing importance, so it is in our collective best interest to support it in any way possible. DM
Medscape
29-05-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Medscape 2050: Peter Diamandis
Medscape 2050: The Future of Medicine The bowhead whale can live for 200 years. The Greenland shark can live up to 500 years. Why can't humans live that long? For Peter Diamandis, MD, executive founder of Singularity, founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, and founding partner of Fountain Life, the answer is simple. 'It's either a software problem or a hardware problem. And we're going to be able to solve that.' The medical field is on an 'exponential growth curve' owing to the impact of AI systems, Diamandis says. Soon, we will be able to map the human body on a cellular level for each individual. Trillions of cells, running billions of chemical reactions every second, are too vast for the human brain to grasp. But not for AI. 'Imagine a future,' Diamandis says, 'where drugs are designed, not discovered. Drugs are designed specifically not just for a disease, but for your version of the disease.' A shift from reactive to preventive medicine is also getting closer. Sensor technology will pick up details such as voice tone, walking rhythm, or the sound of a cough and recommend further tests to catch health issues earlier. For Diamandis, 'data is king.' Your data can reveal your optimal lifestyle plan for diet, exercise, sleep, and mindset. And 'your mindset,' Diamandis says, 'is the most important thing that you possess.' If you believe that we will bend the longevity curve, if you approach these new technologies with optimism, you might just live long enough to experience them.
Forbes
19-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How Moonshot Leaders Like Anousheh Ansari Build the Future
Anousheh Ansari sees big problems the same way a climber sees a summit on the horizon. Distant. Challenging. And too important to ignore. As the CEO of the non-profit XPRIZE Foundation, she's found the perfect job for her approach to problems. Anousheh's role is to incentivize breakthroughs in areas like carbon removal, space exploration, clean water, and longevity—big, hairy problems that can't be solved on a tight deadline or narrow budget. Anousheh is one of the most future-focused people I know. But when we sat down at TED in Vancouver, she shared some frustrations with the now. 'It's increasingly difficult because of this short-termism that people have,' she told me. 'This type of thinking has led us to where we are today and the problems we're facing. And most of the big problems we have will not be fixed in a couple of quarters. We need to really think about scalable approaches to solving them.' Anousheh is Exhibit A for how some people are just wired to focus on the future. Only 16% of us, to be precise. The rest of us inhabit the land of the present, fighting fires and focusing on near-term targets… and risking missing seismic long-term changes that could either kill our business or offer the next billion-dollar opportunity. As our conversation went deeper, it became clear that she doesn't just balance the Now and the Next. She instinctively sees how the Now leads to the Next. 'For me it's been an essential part of anything that I do,' she said. 'I look at (a problem) globally, I look at it long-term, and then I take short-term steps. That sort of comes naturally.' Leaders who want to stay ahead would do well to learn how she spots what's next, reframes risk, and works on the problems everyone else avoids. The XPRIZE Foundation's model is to propose a grand challenge and offer a sizable prize to the first team that can demonstrate a solution. In doing so, the XPRIZE attracts massive brain power and a diversity of potential solutions. They also attract investments from competitors that are collectively several orders of magnitude greater than the prize itself. She isn't interested in small challenges. 'I never even thought about working on improving something and creating a product that was like the next variation,' she told me. 'That never interested me. I think there are lots of people who can do that. I always loved introducing something new to the world. I was focused on solving a problem…I can think of a million better things to do with my time than create the next best dating app.' A Mindset Forged in Adversity As a girl growing up in Iran in the turbulent 1970s and 80s, Anousheh had her eye on an outlandishly tough challenge—going into space. Iran was in revolution and war—and had no space program. Relatives would humor Ansari over her obsession with Star Trek and the pictures she drew of herself in a rocket ship. But that little girl was deadly serious. In 2006, now a U.S. citizen and successful telecom entrepreneur, Anousheh blasted off on a Russian Soyuz rocket that looked uncannily like the ones she drew as a girl, becoming the first Iranian in space and the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station. I asked her where she got this capacity to take on big challenges. It certainly wasn't from her upbringing. Growing up in Iran, failure was seen as a mark of shame rather than a growth opportunity. She was conditioned to try to please everyone. Even after she moved to the United States, Anousheh was still a woman in the male-dominated field of science and technology. 'I'm not part of the boys' club,' she said. It took her years to shed that need to please others. To take risks. But when she did, it was a powerful liberation. '[I realized] I'd always be trying to chase something that I will never achieve. Because even if someone likes what I do, someone else won't like what I do. I needed to stop thinking about that and just focus on what I believe is the right thing for me and how I want to show up in the world.' That clarity of purpose is what allows her to persist even when others don't see what she sees. Now 58, she has the patience and confidence to keep building even when the path isn't obvious, or when others don't understand or believe in her vision. 'If you're not doing it for the right reasons, you'll give up and you'll just throw in the towel and leave,' she said. Rather than seeing failure as shameful, she now embraces it. Failure can be learning, provided you choose to use it. 'If I don't use it wisely, then it's a failure.' Ansari's first venture, with husband Amir, was founding Telecom Technologies to provide telecom companies with a bridge between legacy networks and next-generation technology. Its sale for $550 million in 2000 gave her the funds—and the freedom—to return to her childhood dream of space travel. At the time, Peter Diamandis had launched the first 'X' Prize. Like Anousheh, Diamandis had grown up being obsessed with the idea of traveling to space, but NASA was constantly defending smaller and smaller budgets and mired in controversy. When a friend gave him a book about Charles Lindbergh—the first person to fly from New York to Paris—he learned Lindbergh was doing it for a competition. The Orteig Prize offered a $25,000 reward by wealthy hotelier Raymond Orteig. Diamandis wondered if he could do the same thing for space travel. Soon after, he announced a $10 million challenge for the first non-governmental team that could launch a crewed spacecraft twice within two weeks. The problem, though, was that Diamandis didn't have a wealthy hotelier to fund the prize and claim the naming rights. Confident that a sponsor would appear before the prize was won, he called it simply the 'X' Prize. Those sponsors eventually appeared in the form of Anousheh and Amir Ansari. The success of the Ansari X Prize effectively launched today's $500 billion private space industry. Like the best future-focused leaders, Ansari is able to spot small, early changes today that point to more fundamental macro shifts down the line. When she commits to a big future goal, it's because she's recognized an important need that isn't being met, often because it's hard to do. Her attitude to risk is core to this approach. Faced with a big, bold challenge, most leaders get preoccupied by the risks they run in pursuing it, be that pushback from shareholders, missing nearer-term targets, or straining budgets. Ansari turns that framing on its head: 'The risk of not creating and the risk of not solving that problem to me is greater.' It's this relationship with risk that helps her move forward and persist when others hesitate and get impatient. It's why she persuaded her family to cash in retirement savings to found Telecom Technologies. Every leader can learn from this as they consider how to face long-term macro trends that are already in place, ranging from the shift to electric vehicles, to the effects of climate change, to the trend toward healthy eating and a more diverse population. The real risk doesn't lie in preparing for these versions of the future—it lies in ignoring them. Today, at XPRIZE, she's pioneering a model of innovation that many company leaders could learn from. The organization doesn't just offer prize money for every moonshot idea that gets submitted. It designs clear, measurable, future-focused challenges that attract inventors, engineers, and scientists from around the world. That clarity is hard-earned. Anousheh told me it takes months of research, hundreds of expert interviews, and extensive iteration to hone a vague ambition into something solvable, and that isn't defined too narrowly or too loosely. They ask questions like: 'What breakthroughs and innovations do we need? Why is the problem stuck? Who's investing in it? Why aren't they investing?' This intensive research helps weed out goals that are genuinely unrealistic or, while ambitious, are already being solved by the market. 'Solving homelessness is a genuine moonshot, but is actually far harder than an actual moonshot,' she explained. Involving mental health, drug addiction, and public policy, homelessness is the kind of complex, multifaceted challenge that defies an overarching solution and needs to be broken up into separate goals. This process of carefully evaluating and defining the truly important challenges hasn't just won entrepreneurs prizes—it's been the foundation for enduring competitive success for their businesses. 'They say, 'My company would have died if I had shifted my direction to do exactly what the competition asked me to do,'' Ansari said. That insight really stuck with me. Most executives chase market trends… and end up with similar products. Rather than measuring themselves against the competition, leaders should be defining and solving their own challenges based on how they see the future, or different versions of the future, unfolding. Anousheh Ansari is, of course, keenly focused on making sure that XPRIZE itself is prepared for the future. She's building an endowment to sustain the foundation beyond her and Diamindis. And she's bringing in new talent while also nurturing the alumni ecosystem of former prize competitors as a source of support and fresh ideas. She's doing it because she fundamentally believes her organization is an essential player in creating a better future. 'I don't see any other institution that has this long-term vision and is trying to actually act on it.'
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
GI Innovation and GI Biome Advance to the Semi-finals of XPRIZE Healthspan with Anti-Aging Potential of GI-102 and GIB-7 Combination Therapy
GI Innovation and GI Biome have been selected as a Top 40 semi-finalist in the XPRIZE Healthspan competition among 600 registered teams from 58 countries Selected as one of 8 teams to pitch at the XPRIZE Investor Summit in New York The team is now competing for one of the largest prize pools in the history of XPRIZE SEOUL, South Korea, May 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- GI Innovation, a South Korean biotech company, announced on May 13 that it has been selected as a semi-finalist in the XPRIZE Healthspan competition in collaboration with its sister company GI Biome. The XPRIZE Healthspan semi-finals ceremony is taking place in New York from May 12 to 14, with the top 40 semi-finalist teams out of more than 600 registered teams among 58 countries invited. The company has not only advanced to the semi-finals but has also been selected as one of 8 teams among the 40 semi-finalists to earn an exclusive opportunity to present its vision and innovations to high-profile, institutional global investors. XPRIZE, a U.S.-based nonprofit foundation, is the recognized global leader in designing and executing large-scale competitions to solve humanity's greatest challenges. For over 30 years, our unique model has democratized crowd-sourced innovation and scientifically scalable solutions that accelerate a more equitable and abundant future. Semi-finalists are selected by an expert committee using rigorous guidelines and advancement into this elite group is seen as recognition of exceptional scientific vision and execution. The XPRIZE Healthspan competition, in which the joint GI Innovation - GI Biome team is competing, aims to discover breakthrough treatments that can slow or prevent age-related degeneration. The competition offers a record-breaking total prize pool of approximately USD $101 million. Selected as a semi-finalist team, GI Innovation will receive a prize of USD $250,000 to support the next clinical trial stage. Only the top 10 teams from the semi-finals round will advance to the grand finals. 'Anti-Aging' Strategy with Immune Booster GI-102 and Microbiome-Based GIB-7 Combination The GI Innovation-GI Biome joint team proposed a combination therapy consisting of GI-102, an immune-boosting drug, and GIB-7, a microbiome-based synbiotic, as a novel anti-aging approach. Clinical studies have shown that GI-102 potently activates CD8+ T cells and NK cells at high doses, allowing those immune cells to safely attack a range of tumor types including melanoma, kidney, lung and bladder cancers. However, at a low dose, it selectively expands and activates NK cells, which are critical for clearing senescent cells and cellular debris, playing a vital role in delaying aging and maintaining physiological functions. Based on this mechanism, GI Innovation is pursuing the use of low-dose GI-102 as an NK cell enhancer. GIB-7 is a premium synbiotic developed using GI Biome's proprietary Microbiome+ Herbal Therapy platform. It combines three patented probiotic strains with herbal ingredients. Clinical trials in elderly volunteers at Seoul National University Hospital have already been completed. In an aging mouse model, GIB-7 elicited an increase in beneficial gut microbiota, improved regulation of circadian rhythm, and improved muscle strength. "We entered this competition with the goal of winning, and it is a great honor to have passed the first gateway, highlighting the scientific innovation of both GI Innovation and GI Biome," said Dr. Myoung-Ho Jang, CEO and Founder of GI Innovation. "The upcoming clinical trial will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Katherine Samaras, a key opinion leader in anti-aging research at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia. Through this competition, we will do our utmost to realize our global vision of progressing from treatment to prevention." View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE GI Innovation Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Global longevity competition for $101 million names semifinalists—here are their ideas for extending life by 10 years or more
The contestants in a race to extend life are on their second lap. In a seven-year global competition, teams are rushing to discover novel therapeutics and interventions that can extend human life by a decade and help people age well. In 2023, Peter Diamandis, an entrepreneur, self-proclaimed futurist, and founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, launched the $101 million healthspan competition. Since then, over 600 teams from 58 countries have put their ideas in the ring, including medical devices, lifestyle interventions, and biological therapies. Today, the competition awarded each of the top 40 teams $250,000 to help them test their hypotheses in clinical trials. 'We're really pushing at a global scale for people to accelerate the process, so we can get real solutions in the hands of people who need them,' Jamie Justice, PhD, executive director of XPRIZE Healthspan, tells Fortune. Teams from all over the globe, composed of students, university researchers, and even a Nobel Prize winner, are competing for the coveted prize, which will amount to $81 million. One team of high schoolers from Malaysia pitched a community-based solution that includes facilitating drum circles with older adults. Another team is testing the potential life-extending benefits of popular diabetes and weight-loss drugs, GLP-1s. Still another is examining whether the drug Metformin can help prevent cognitive decline. By 2030, the winner will have shown that their therapy can restore muscle, cognitive, and immune function in a one-year clinical trial of older adults. "The next breakthrough in aging could come from scientists and entrepreneurs, anywhere. With this prize, we're igniting a global healthspan revolution, and these semifinalists are leading the charge," said Diamandis, in a press release. "This competition isn't just accelerating progress, it's challenging our society's beliefs in what's possible when it comes to aging." Judges made up of leading researchers and scientists in the field assessed teams based on whether they illustrated 'really solid innovation [on a] potential breakthrough that could affect all of the processes that underlie how we age,' says Justice. Teams had to show a readiness for clinical trials with strong evidence of an intervention that can be scaled to the broader population. While people are living longer, there is still a decade-long gap, on average, between how well people live and how well they live in good health. This competition is hoping to reduce the gap and extend how long people live in good health. 'We're looking at solutions that can be proactive and can be generalized to a greater population, so that we can begin to address that gap at a population level,' Justice says. Teams will submit data from their clinical trials by April of next year, ahead of XPRIZE selecting the top ten finalists in July of 2026, followed by the grand prize winner selected in 2030. This story was originally featured on
