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Activating Planetary Genius

Imagine tapping into a worldwide braintrust, collaborating with the best thinkers, dreamers, and doers across industries, academia, startups, and even competitors. With open innovation, we can create entire ecosystems of solvers, expand the focus and resources dedicated to a problem, and incubate and accelerate the most transformative ideas for society-sized impact.

Active Challenges and Prizes

Nature Intelligence for Business Grand Challenge (2025) 

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Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) power global supply chains, but most operate without understanding how their relationship with nature creates both hidden risks and untapped opportunities. By equipping these businesses with better tools, we can strengthen supply chains, build resilience, and open the door to nature-positive economies.

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The Nature Intelligence for Business Grand Challenge exists to incentivize solutions that enable businesses, regardless of their size or location, to access and employ nature intelligence and become part of the solution.

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Fire Grand Challenge (2025) 

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Fire is a natural part of many ecosystems. But on a planet rapidly changing due to climate change, habitat destruction, and resource extraction, fire is becoming an increasing threat to nature and human communities alike. Just as human-caused changes have made fire a danger in many places, human ingenuity has the power to reimagine and remember how we, and the creatures we share Earth with, can live and thrive with fire.

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The Fire Grand Challenge aims to transform how we manage and live with fire by catalyzing scalable solutions that braid together traditional and rural knowledge with cutting-edge technology and innovation.

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Alternative Proteins: The Amazon (2025) 

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In the Amazon—a storehouse of 123B tons of carbon and home to 10% of the world’s species—about 72% of deforestation is a direct or indirect result of animal agriculture. As incomes and populations rise through 2050, demand for animal-based foods could increase by 70%. Alternative proteins that satisfy our craving for animal products are crucial for stemming the extinction and climate crises.

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Our alternative proteins open innovation program will incentivize innovators around the world to solve key bottlenecks to alternative proteins achieving taste-parity, cost-parity, and consumer enthusiasm while laying the foundation for a sustainable alternative proteins industry in the Amazon.

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Artisanal Mining Grand Challenge: Report (2025)

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Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) represents a major environmental and social challenge, producing 20-25% of global gold supply while driving deforestation, mercury pollution, and ecosystem degradation across biodiversity hotspots in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

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To address the gap in innovation, we conducted two open innovation challenges collectively known as the Artisanal Mining Grand Challenges. The first invited solutions to address artisanal and small-scale mining across minerals globally, awarding $750k in prizes. The second invited solutions specific to addressing ASGM in the Amazon.

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This report shares the first-ever analysis of outcomes as well as reflections on effectively advancing the transition toward a more environmentally and socially responsible ASGM sector.

Download the full report in English or the executive summary in Spanish

Con X Tech Prize: The Amazon (2024)

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The Con X Tech Prize: The Amazon is a global competition that seeks cutting-edge science and tech innovations to transform the Amazon's destructive, extractive economies into modern, regenerative ones.

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Textile Circularity Challenge: Landscape Analysis (2025) 

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Despite the growing number of textile-to-textile recycling initiatives, the industry faces significant challenges, including inconsistent feedstock quality, complex fiber blends, and limited recycling infrastructure. Our goal in this space is to bring together key players in the fashion, textile, and recycling industries to drive systemic change and unlock the potential for a sustainable, circular textile economy.

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CXL is proud to release a Textile Circularity Landscape Analysis, offering fresh insights and actionable recommendations to further advance this critical work.

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Download the Report

Past Challenges and Prizes

ARSX Challenge (2020)
Artisanal Mining Grand Challenge: Global (2020)
Artisanal Mining Grand Challenge: The Amazon (2021)
Blue Economy Challenge (2016)
Con X Tech Prize (2018)
Con X Tech Prize (2019)
Global Cooling Prize (2020)
Make for the Planet Borneo (2018)
Microfiber Innovation Challenge (2022)
Oceans X Labs (2018)
Ohi’a Challenge (2019)