Tuesday, March 17, 2015

XPRIZE Targets Crowd With New Spinoff, HeroX

XPRIZE, the foundation which has been running multi-million dollar prizes aimed at spurring innovation to addresss some of the world's biggest issues, said Tuesday that it has spun out a new company, HeroX, aimed at crowdsourcing solutions to smaller and local challenges. According to XPRIZE, the new, for-profit venture--backed by City Light Capital--is aimed at bringing about "radical business, technological and social innovation". Among the competitions and prizes on the site are competitions to create a self replicating robot, better recruit patients to clinical cancer trials, and to reduce gun violence. XPRIZE is based in Los Angeles. The new startup--which looks to be geographically distributed--was created by Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Christian Cotichini, and Emily Fowler.