Peter Diamandis is betting that brighter science fiction can help build a better reality. The XPRIZE founder has unveiled the $3.5 million Future Vision XPRIZE, a global competition designed to catalyze film projects that portray technology as a force for human progress—think the ethos of Star Trek, without the dystopian dread that dominates many screens today.
Backed by a coalition that spans Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and the Star Trek legacy itself, the prize aims to do more than hand out checks. It’s a structured pipeline to take visionary ideas from three-minute trailers to funded short films and, ultimately, a feature-length production with real market momentum.
What The Future Vision XPRIZE Funds And Supports
The competition invites creators to submit a three-minute trailer that vividly depicts an optimistic, technology-enabled future. Judges led by Range Media Partners will shortlist entries for funding to produce a 10-minute short. From those, a single grand-prize project will receive $2.5 million in production funding plus a $100,000 cash award to kickstart a feature film.
In a nod to transparency and audience testing, Diamandis expects the trailer phase to land on YouTube, opening the door to a two-billion-plus audience, according to Google’s publicly cited user figures. The winning project will also be featured on the film section of Republic, positioning it to raise an additional $5 million to $10 million from a crowd of investors who want to back hopeful futures.
Submissions are open now. Entries will close later in the summer, with winners named in the fall—giving creators a clear runway to develop, iterate, and rally early fans.
Human Stories First In An AI-Driven Creative World
Although the prize encourages the use of cutting-edge tools, including generative AI, Diamandis is explicit about guardrails: this is not a contest for automated “AI slop.” The bar is human-led storytelling—characters with agency, plots with heart—augmented, not replaced, by machines. That stance echoes growing industry consensus across guilds and studios that AI should accelerate production, not erase authorship.
To operationalize that hybrid approach, the competition is partnering with 100 Zeros, a Google and Range Media initiative that equips filmmakers with advanced production technology. Entrants will have pathways to experiment with tools like Google’s Veo video-generation model and Flow video-creation suite while keeping creative intent front and center.
A Coalition Built On Optimism Across Tech And Film
Diamandis tapped a heavyweight roster to underwrite the purse and amplify reach. Backers include Rod Roddenberry, steward of Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic canon; Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff; Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood; and Google. Additional donors span tech and entertainment, from Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Ben Horowitz to Ripple cofounder Jed McCaleb and actor-producer Seth Green.
Members of Diamandis’s Abundance community—CEOs he mentors—have also written checks, collectively contributing nearly half of the prize money. The mix of institutional sponsors and entrepreneurial patrons is a familiar XPRIZE formula: attract diverse stakeholders early so winners have champions beyond the award ceremony.
Why An Optimistic Sci-Fi Push Matters Right Now
Diamandis argues that popular culture has leaned too hard into techno-doom, numbing audiences with killer-robot tropes and collapse scenarios. Meanwhile, he notes, the real-world toolset available to solve big problems has never been more accessible. Consumer-grade AI systems from leading labs, cloud-scale compute, and open-source communities have dramatically lowered barriers for creators, researchers, and startups alike.
His own work sits where AI meets health and longevity—fields racing to decode what’s happening across the tens of trillions of cells in the human body. That frontier, he says, is rich with storylines that elevate human potential: breakthroughs in preventive care, personalized diagnostics, and mission-scale science that feels closer to a Starfleet than a surveillance state.
The XPRIZE Playbook And What It Signals For Culture
XPRIZE has a track record of converting audacious prompts into industry movement. The $10 million Ansari XPRIZE spurred more than $100 million in team spending and helped jumpstart commercial spaceflight. The Global Learning XPRIZE catalyzed open-source literacy tools later tested in the field. The $100 million Carbon Removal XPRIZE, funded by Elon Musk, continues to push the carbon capture ecosystem forward. The organization also ran a Tricorder XPRIZE, an explicit hat-tip to Star Trek’s most famous medical gadget.
Future Vision applies that same incentive architecture to culture. If you want more builders to chase constructive futures, first give them a clear picture to build toward—and the backing to reach theaters and streamers. The prize’s end-to-end path from trailer to feature, coupled with crowdfunding and studio-grade mentorship, is designed to de-risk that journey.
What Success Could Look Like For Hopeful Sci-Fi Films
In concrete terms, the best entries will likely blend near-term plausibility with long-arc ambition:
- equitable AI tutors lifting global literacy
- clean energy grids powering thriving cities
- biotech tools that prevent disease instead of just treating it
Crucially, the stories must anchor on people—explorers, engineers, caregivers, communities—whose choices, not just gadgets, move the plot.
Star Trek inspired generations of scientists and entrepreneurs to turn fiction into hardware: communicators into smartphones, tablets into everyday screens, medical sensors into clinical prototypes. Diamandis wants to refresh that feedback loop. If the competition lands as intended, the next wave of founders and filmmakers could align around a simple premise: imagine better, then build it.
