$101M Challenge to Add 20 Healthy Years of Life

XPRIZE has launched 30 prizes in 30 years... over $500M worth of incentive purses driving 30x value ($15 Billion). Amazing.

I’m often asked: “Which is your favorite XPRIZE?” No parent should have a “favorite” child, but after the original $10M Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight conceived of in 1994 and won in 2004, I have to say that the $101M XPRIZE Healthspan, launched just 6 months ago, is definitely an XPRIZE I LOVE!

The XPRIZE Foundation was founded to “inspire and guide entrepreneurs to solve grand challenges” – to elevate a problem and focus entrepreneurs worldwide to solve it, saying:

“I don’t care where you live, what you’ve done before, where you went to school... IF YOU SOLVE THIS CHALLENGE, you win the cash, and the world reaps the benefits.”

In short: XPRIZE is about solving grand challenges and giving the world hope.

In today’s blog, I’ll discuss the $101M XPRIZE Healthspan, its purpose and promise.

Let’s dive in… 

Adding 20 Years of “Healthspan”

The stated goal of the $101M XPRIZE Healthspan is to add 20 healthy years of life. It’s a 7-year global competition to incentivize teams to develop and test therapeutics to improve healthy aging and close the gap between life and health expectancy. 

Over the last century, global life expectancy has more than doubled, but the quality of our health has lagged by a 12-year gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy.

Lifespan means: How long your heart is beating.

Healthspan means: That period of life free of major chronic disease or disability.

Experts at London Business School, Oxford, and Harvard suggest that extending just one healthy year of life is worth $38 trillion to the global economy and extending healthy life by 10 years could net greater than $300 trillion. 

With the world's population of people over 60 years of age expected to almost double from 12% to 22% between 2015 and 2050—or 1 in 5 people—there is an urgent need to find novel solutions for healthy aging.

“People around the world are living longer, but quality of life has not kept pace. By targeting aging with a single or combination of therapeutic treatments, it may be possible to restore function lost to age-related degradation of multiple organ systems.” 

And an additional $10M FSHD Bonus Prize will be awarded to a team that demonstrates the ability to restore lost muscular function due to Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD) in 1 year or less. 

Chip Wilson, a dear friend and Founder and Chairman of SOLVE FSHD, Co-Title Sponsor of XPRIZE Healthspan, sums it up best: 

“​​It does not make any sense to have a long lifespan without being healthy. I can think of no better place to spend my money than to extend the life of myself and the rest of the planet. I believe it was the concept of ‘Why should I die with money?’ that inspired me to be part of this incredible venture.”

- Chip Wilson, CEO and Founder, SOLVE FSHD

Thus far the competition has ~300 teams, and I hope we’ll eventually get to 500+. We plan to give away $10M of the Prize Purse in about 1 year, another $10M in about 3 years, and the remaining $81M will await the winning teams.

If you are a biotech/health-tech company interested in competing, I URGE YOU to register. There is no downside, only upside. Go here to register: https://www.xprize.org/prizes/healthspan.

The competition is run by an extraordinary leader, Jamie Justice, PhD:

“By developing therapeutics that target biological aging rather than disease, we can revolutionize the way we think about and treat aging. If these trials are successful, we can prove that it is possible to improve health even as we age.”

- Jamie Justice, PhD, Exec. Director, XPRIZE Healthspan

This year I hope that Dr. Justice will give an update on the teams and the competition during our annual Platinum Longevity Trip. Many of the family offices who participate in the Platinum Trip have been benefactors of this competition alongside Chip Wilson, Hevolution Foundation, and myself. 

Why This Matters

Creating a world of abundance isn’t about creating a world of luxury, it’s about creating a world of possibility.

We want to create a future we can be proud of. 

Converging exponential technologies such as AI, epigenetics, gene therapy, cellular medicine, and sensors are allowing us to understand why we age—it’s time to revolutionize the way we age. 

Working across all sectors, we can democratize health and create a future where healthy aging is accessible for everyone and full of potential.