XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis launches competition to inspire real-world ‘Star Trek’ technologies

As any “Star Trek” fan is likely to say, one reason the sci-fi franchise has remained so enduring is that it presents an optimistic vision of the future, one in which technology plays the role of a force for good.

Now Peter Diamandis — the well-known XPRIZE founder, author, tech investor, motivational speaker, and longevity advocate — has launched a new $3.5 million Future Vision XPRIZE designed to encourage more of those optimistic sci-fi futures to make their way onto screens.

Diamandis says he traces his entire remarkable career back to watching “Star Trek” as a child.

“‘Star Trek’ offered a hopeful vision of the future, right? It was humans/humanity and technology in collaboration,” Diamandis said. “I truly credit it with everything that I have since achieved, because it motivated me to want to go and create and manifest that future.”

He argues that science fiction films and television today are mostly focused on disaster and breakdown.

“Every science-fiction movie I was seeing painted this dystopian vision of the future. It was always, everything is going wrong, and it’s a result of technology. You know, killer robots, dystopian AIs. It’s ‘Black Mirror.’ It’s ‘Terminator.’ It’s ‘Ex Machina,’” he said. “Why would you ever want to live in that future?”

So he reached out to a circle of supporters that included Rod Roddenberry, son of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood, and contacts at Google. Together, they agreed to sponsor the new Future Vision XPRIZE.

The competition is intended to encourage filmmakers and creators to tell more stories about how a technologically advanced future can be positive and inspiring. Diamandis believes that if people can see that future, they will be more likely to build it.

“Right now, there’s a huge amount of growing uncertainty in people’s lives. Will my kids have a job? Will I have a job?” he said. He added that the pace of change makes it difficult for many people to picture what lies ahead, especially when they are constantly hit with “negative stories about tomorrow.”

Diamandis also emphasises another reality worth noting. Standing at the intersection of AI and longevity, he believes it has never been easier for a person with an idea to pursue it.

“The most powerful tools on the planet are free and available to everybody,” he said, referring to consumer AI systems from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others. “I mean, that’s honestly incredible, right? … We have democratised and demonetised the ability for people to solve problems.”

He points to longevity — the science of living longer while also staying healthier as people age — as one example.

“AI is enabling us to understand what’s going on in our 40 trillion human cells,” he said. Diamandis is also a co-founder, alongside Tony Robbins, of longevity-focused health tech company Fountain Life. He wants more futures like that depicted on screen.

At the same time, although he encourages contestants to use AI tools in their projects, Diamandis cautions that low-quality AI slop — submissions fully written and produced by AI — is unlikely to succeed.

“I don’t want an AI-generated script and an AI-generated film without the human,” he said. “The humanity of it all is really important.”

The Future Vision XPRIZE is also being run with support from the 100 Zeros initiative, a partnership between Google and production company Range Media Partners. That initiative partners with filmmakers to develop tech-inspired stories using Google’s tools, including Veo, a video-generation model, and Flow, a video-creation tool.

Submissions open on March 9 and close on August 15, with winners set to be announced on September 25. Each entrant will submit a three-minute trailer. Diamandis said he expects the competition to “flood” YouTube with entries, making them available for public viewing and comment. Judges, led by the team at Range Media, will then narrow the field to a smaller group that will receive funding to create a 10-minute short film.

The grand prize winner will be selected from the shorts and will receive $2.5 million in production support for the development of a feature-length film, along with a $100,000 cash award. The winning project is also expected to appear in the film section of the crowdfunding platform Republic, where it could raise an additional $5 million to $10 million for its production budget.

Diamandis said that members of his Abundance community of CEOs, whom he mentors, have also contributed financially. Around 15 of them have supplied nearly half of the total prize money, he said.

Other notable backers include Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz, Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb, and actor-producer Seth Green.

Diamandis hopes the competition becomes recurring. His goal is to replace fear with what he calls “an exponential mindset.” By that, he means “having agency, where you feel like the future is not happening to you, that the future is happening for you,” he said.