Food + Water + Waste
Feed The Next Billion
Designed to meet growing global demand for protein without overwhelming the planet, this prize challenged teams to create sustainable, affordable, and scalable alternatives to chicken and fish, matching or exceeding conventional meat in taste, texture, and nutrition.
Impact
$1.94B invested into team solutions
371 patents filed by competing teams
133X impact on every $1 of prize money
Winner
No Grand Prize was awarded. Instead, six finalist teams pioneered breakthroughs in structured, nutritious alternative proteins—propelling plant, cell, and fermentation-based meats toward commercial viability.
Sponsors
Sponsors fund the prize journey from bold idea to breakthrough—shaping each competition, supporting global teams, and accelerating solutions that scale. Their backing powers impact that lasts well beyond the prize.
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Partners
Partners play a hands-on role in our prizes—co-designing competitions, supporting operations, and helping scale solutions with their expertise, resources, and global reach.
Barrier
By 2050, the global population will reach 9.7 billion—driving demand for meat beyond what our current food systems can sustain. Conventional production accelerates climate change, biodiversity loss, and global food insecurity.
Breakthrough
Breakthrough solutions delivered sustainable chicken or fish alternatives that equal or surpass conventional meat in taste, texture, nutrition, and price—paving the way for more ethical, climate-resilient protein sources for all.
About the Prize
XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion was a multi-year global competition to accelerate the production of alternative proteins that could meet rising global demand for meat—without the environmental, ethical, and health burdens of traditional agriculture.
The $15M prize challenged teams to create chicken breast or fish fillet analogs that matched or exceeded conventional meat in six key areas: taste and texture, nutritional value, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, scalability, and consumer accessibility.
Over three years, teams advanced a wide range of technologies—from cultivated and plant-based proteins to hybrid and fermentation-based approaches. Products were evaluated in blind taste tests and scored against conventional chicken and fish for their performance, nutritional content, and ability to scale.
Although no Grand Prize was awarded, the innovations developed marked a significant leap forward, demonstrating how sustainable proteins can reduce land use, preserve biodiversity, and lower greenhouse gas emissions while still meeting global demand.
By creating new food systems rooted in science, equity, and resilience, this prize helped move sustainable protein from a niche product to a viable, global solution. XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion proved that the world doesn’t need to choose between feeding people and protecting the planet; we can do both.
Prize Schedule
Launched in 2020, the competition concluded in 2024. Over three years, teams developed and tested meat alternatives under real-world conditions. No Grand Prize was awarded; however, six finalists were recognized for advancing sustainable protein toward global adoption.