Open Innovation Prizes and Challenges Grant
In context
This call is open to startups, small and medium-sized businesses and non-profits and 4 others, at idea and R&D stage, prototype and pilot stage and pre-seed. Funding is a prize or award. Coverage is read from the notice itself: any country.
Conservation X Labs runs open innovation prizes and challenges to surface breakthrough solutions for biodiversity and conservation problems. Eligible innovators can compete for funding to develop and scale technologies and approaches addressing conservation challenges.
About this grant
Conservation X Labs (CXL) runs Open Innovation Prizes and Challenges to catalyze breakthrough solutions aimed at preventing the sixth mass extinction. The programme deploys competitive prize mechanisms to attract interdisciplinary solvers—scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and innovators—to address the most pressing threats to biodiversity, ecosystems, and planetary health. To date, CXL has completed 19 prizes and challenges, distributing more than $12 million in funding and supporting 165 game-changing innovations, with innovators going on to attract more than $570 million in follow-on support after working with CXL. The prizes and challenges focus on CXL's four strategic 'Big Bets': stopping the Amazon from tipping by incentivizing sustainable alternatives to extractive economies; preventing future pandemics by investing in solutions that detect and reduce zoonotic spillover from wildlife to humans; protecting wild ecosystems by leveraging technology to manage invasive species and improve protected area effectiveness; and activating the next generation of conservationists by expanding the field with new disciplines, tools, and training. CXL combines its open innovation work with in-house invention (including molecular assays for neglected pathogens and wildlife tracking tools) and field-level conservation support. The prize-and-challenge model is designed to unlock non-traditional problem-solvers and harness marketplace forces alongside scientific expertise to generate transformative rather than incremental conservation outcomes.
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Eligibility
The page does not specify detailed eligibility criteria for individual prizes and challenges. In general, CXL's open innovation model is designed to attract a broad, interdisciplinary community of solvers including scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, and innovators globally. Specific eligibility requirements vary by individual prize or challenge.
How it's scored
No specific evaluation or scoring criteria are described on this page. Criteria likely vary by individual prize or challenge.
Key requirements
- ✓Solution must address a biodiversity or conservation problem
- ✓Innovation must be breakthrough or novel in approach
- ✓Applicants compete in specific prize/challenge tracks (varies by round)
Frequently asked questions
- How much funding does Conservation X Labs offer?
- Open Innovation Prizes and Challenges offers $12M.
- Who can apply for Open Innovation Prizes and Challenges?
- Eligibility covers organisations in GLOBAL; startup, sme, nonprofit, university, research-institution, individual, consortium. See the eligibility criteria above for the full conditions.
Relevant sectors
About this sector
Biodiversity funding backs habitat restoration, species protection, protected areas and nature-positive business. It comes from environment agencies, multilateral nature funds and conservation philanthropy, often through competitive calls with defined regions. Applicants are usually asked for baseline surveys, local partners and indicators that show ecological change.
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