XPRIZE, the world's leader in designing and operating large-scale incentive competitions to solve humanity's grand challenges, announced the winners of its $10 million XPRIZE Rainforest competition, sponsored by Alana Foundation, this weekend at the G20 Social Summit. Team Limelight Rainforest earned the competition's grand prize, taking home $5,000,000 for their ability to survey 100 hectares of tropical rainforest in 24 hours and produce the most impactful real-time insights within 48 hours. Limelight's unique technology involves drone-deployed multi-taxa monitoring sensors, including a novel insect light trap, that demonstrates remarkable performance to advance biodiversity monitoring and have a tremendous impact on conservation goals of the United Nations Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as it scales to be implemented across countries, states, Indigenous territories and national parks globally.

This announcement comes at a time when roughly 64% of the world's tropical rainforest has been destroyed or degraded, and continues to be destroyed at a rapid rate, despite being home to half of all living animal and plant species on the planet. Roughly 20% of the Amazon has already been lost, and studies show that at 20-25% degradation, the Amazon ecosystem will face a tipping point and irreversibly shift global climate. Rainforests are biodiversity hotspots and essential in climate regulation, but consistently face deforestation for agricultural expansion, logging, mining and other industrial projects. Biodiversity globally is facing catastrophic loss at an unprecedented rate, with a recent study showing a startling decline in monitored wildlife populations, with the most drastic decline of 95% in Latin America and the Caribbean.

"The future of life on Earth, including that of our own species, will depend on humanity's collective ability to urgently understand the true value of nature on our planet and coexist with it. The technologies designed and field tested through XPRIZE Rainforest are capable of rapidly and remotely assessing the biodiversity and ecological insights of tropical rainforests at scale," said Peter Houlihan, executive vice president, Biodiversity and Conservation, XPRIZE. "In partnership with Indigenous Peoples and local communities, these tools are ideally suited for implementation to monitor, manage and protect tropical rainforests globally, and to accelerate the achievement of the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework by 2030."

XPRIZE Rainforest launched in 2019 with a goal to accelerate the innovation of novel technologies that rapidly and comprehensively survey biodiversity and produce impactful insights to inform conservation efforts. Out of 300 teams across 70 countries, 13 teams qualified for rigorous Semifinals testing in Singapore in 2023. Six competitors were identified to advance to the competition's final stage which took place in July 2024 in the Brazilian Amazon. Each team had 24 hours to deploy their technologies, remotely survey a 100 hectare test plot of tropical rainforest without physically entering the test area and produce a biodiversity analysis report within 48 hours following the deployment. In order to win the competition's grand prize, teams were also tasked with demonstrating scalability to effectively disrupt the often lengthy, laborious and resource-intensive process of data collection and analysis.

Limelight Rainforest (formerly Team Waponi) is a multidisciplinary team of ecologists, robotics engineers, Indigenous scientists, and taxonomists who collaborated on the Limelight solution to win the competition. The Limelight sensor platform is designed to be deployed via drone to the rainforest canopy, the most under-researched layer of the rainforest, to collect bioacoustic data, images of insects, and insect specimens that are attracted to the technology's novel light trap. The platform provides a real-time feed of data to its base technology, which rapidly identifies species using machine learning. The technology is significantly condensing the amount of time needed to capture DNA from the environment and specimens for identification using a purpose-developed, field-based, portable molecular lab kit. During Finals testing, Limelight identified over 250 different species and 700 unique taxa across both the animal and plant kingdoms from observations recorded during their 24-hour deployment, the highest amount of biodiversity observed by Finalist teams.

"XPRIZE Rainforest gave us the funding, motivation, and collaborative community we needed to move this technology forward," said Thomas Walla, PhD, professor of biology at Colorado Mesa University and team leader of Limelight Rainforest. "Limelight has the potential to revolutionize the rate at which we monitor and assess biodiversity with technology that's small enough to fit in a backpack. Compared to existing technologies that may sequence 1,500 species over 2 years, Limelight has the potential to sequence 2,500 in 1 week. We're incredibly proud of what we've developed and are excited to get it into the hands of conservationists and researchers to help preserve invaluable ecosystems around the world."

The second-place winner of the competition was Map of Life Rapid Assessments, which during Finals testing geolocated and identified over 5,000 individual animals and plants from 225 species. They were awarded $2,000,000 for their solution which combines a fleet of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) designed to collect audio, visual, and eDNA samples with minimal human intervention, on-site eDNA processing, and AI technologies to rapidly deliver actionable biodiversity insights. Brazilian Team was awarded third place and received $500,000 for their ability to develop technologies and protocols for the accessible, rapid and replicable study of biodiversity, designed to be easily handled by non-specialized professionals. Team ETH BiodivX received a $250,000 bonus prize at the discretion of the Judging Panel for their technology which collects large amounts of eDNA, images and sounds through semi-autonomous drones and analyzes the data through a live dashboard utilizing advanced AI algorithms and a global community of Indigenous and forest community citizen scientists.

"XPRIZE Rainforest inspired teams to advance biodiversity data collection and assessment tools to dramatically reduce the time and data gaps and enhance global rainforest conservation efforts, and we're incredibly proud of the technologies these teams produced," said Anousheh Ansari, CEO, XPRIZE. "This competition successfully pushed the boundaries of conservation technology, and will uncover new knowledge about this precious part of our planet. I'm proud of how XPRIZE and these teams worked closely with the Indigenous People living in the rainforest as they are ultimately the stewards of the land. None of this would have been possible without passionate support of the Alana Foundation."

Made possible by support from sponsor Alana Foundation, XPRIZE Rainforest was designed to drive significant advancements in the field of biodiversity measurement and assessment and support the preservation of rainforests and all of its biodiversity globally. These new technologies are designed to inform the preservation of these essential ecosystems, working in tandem with Indigenous peoples to help increase their levels of protection.

"My hope is for everyone to recognize the immense value of Earth's biodiversity. Understanding what we have is essential; it's the foundation for discoveries that could answer some of our biggest challenges—whether breakthroughs in medicine, insights into carbon cycles, or countless other areas," said Ana Lucia Villela, president, Alana Foundation. "Knowing what exists helps us protect it and move closer to solutions the world truly needs."

"We're all part of nature, and we all have a responsibility to protect and preserve nature," said Pedro Hartung, executive director, Alana Foundation. "The technologies developed by the winning teams of XPRIZE Rainforest will help us strengthen the connection between humans and nature by implementing new solutions locally, and help us realize a future in which we live in greater harmony with these diverse ecosystems."

Over the course of Finals testing, teams uploaded their bioacoustics and imaging data to iNaturalist; around 800 species were observed by the 6 Finalist teams, compared to around 400 species identified by 13 Semifinalist during Semifinals testing in Singapore, underscoring the advances teams made to enhance their technologies to meet competition guidelines. A Judging Panel of independent third-party world-leading experts in biodiversity and rainforest ecology and conservation evaluated, advanced, and awarded competing teams throughout the competition. The winning XPRIZE Rainforest technologies are designed to be deployed in protected areas by end users such as non-governmental organizations, local and Indigenous communities, to inform conservation efforts. These solutions will more rapidly obtain data needed to reinforce conservation work and expand protected areas to safeguard biodiversity around the world. 

Learn more at xprize.org/rainforest.

About XPRIZE: XPRIZE is the recognized global leader in designing and executing large-scale competitions to solve humanity's greatest challenges. For 30 years, our unique model has democratized crowd-sourced innovation and scientifically scalable solutions that accelerate a more equitable and abundant future. Donate, learn more, and co-architect a world of abundance with us at xprize.org. 

About Alana Foundation: Alana Foundation is an independent philanthropic organisation founded in 2012 in the United States. The Foundation supports initiatives in the areas of environment, inclusive education and health science research through grants and co-funding partnerships. It also engages with networks and global movements in those areas.

Source: Press Release