Context: XPRIZE, a nonprofit organization out of Culver City, California, hosts competitions to create technological advances in order to benefit humanity. It launched its Feed the Next Billion campaign in December 2020. It challenges teams to produce a plant-based, cultivated, or blended cut of fish or poultry by the competition’s end in 2024. The challenge will accelerate innovation in the industry by creating a meat or fish analogue that will outperform traditional protein in taste, texture, sustainability, and scalability. XPRIZE prides itself on creating challenges that shape innovation, such as its Google lunar launch. Funders for this prize include the Tony Robbins Foundation and Aspire.

Specific Challenge:  XPRIZE needed thought partners to articulate the technical aspects of prize development, from scoring mechanisms to competition guidelines. In the words of Good Food Institute (GFI) Senior Scientist Eliot Swartz, “We foresee a future where the emerging technologies of structuring and formulating plant-based ingredients and cultivating animal and microbial cells come together to meet the protein demands of a growing population without sacrificing human, animal, and planetary health. The Feeding the Next Billion prize will get the world closer to achieving that goal.” Helikon’s goal was to meet this project’s technical needs.

Helikon’s Work:  We guided the team through development and refinement of competition technical requirements and brought on world experts to support the competition. We worked in collaboration with the prize operations team to create competition requirements for competing teams and represent the prize and XPRIZE Foundation at external events. Additional contributions include robust metrics development for some of the industry’s most complex challenges, such as environmental and economic impact of cell-based meat.