Peter Diamandis — XPrize Foundation

Founder and Executive Chairman

THE LATEST: Diamandis heads the XPrize Foundation, which stages large-scale competitions to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. In March, XPrize announced the five teams that won its $6 million XPrize Rapid Covid Testing competition. Launched in July amid the Covid-19 pandemic, this prize comes out of the XPrize Pandemic Alliance to bring researchers, innovators, institutions, corporations and governments together to share ideas and resources in the fight against the current and future pandemics. Since its launch, 85 organizations have joined the alliance.
BACKGROUND: The Bronx-born and Long Island-raised Diamandis attended Hamilton College, MIT and Harvard Medical School. In 1994, he founded XPrize to encourage private-sector space flight. The competition’s $10 million award was eventually expanded to include education, life sciences, energy and the environment. Diamandis serves as vice chairman and co-founder of Human Longevity Inc., which is creating the world’s largest genome database. Together with Steven Kotler, Diamandis has co-authored several New York Times best-selling books.
YEARS ON THE LA500: 6
Return to the 2021 edition of the LA500.