New York City, NY, Oct. 01, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The NSF ASCEND Engine in Colorado and Wyoming, led by Innosphere, and the XPRIZE Foundation announced the launch of the Soil Ecosystem Prize Studio, a new initiative that will foster a constellation of interconnected prize competitions focused on the acceleration, maturation, and commercial adoption of ambitious soil health solutions.
The Prize Studio is an 18-month initiative that will support technical prize architecture, launch readiness, and partner activation, and will lay the foundation for a follow-on large-scale moonshot prize focused on translating promising soil health technologies to market and scale. Initial small-scale prize competitions will focus on concrete, specific bottlenecks in scaling soil health solutions, exploring areas such as measurement at scale and low-cost characterization of biological activity. These innovations will be connected to market adoption pathways through Prize Studio partners and will support critical applications such as the rapid restoration of degraded soils following wildfire events.
XPRIZE is the world’s leading designer and operator of large-scale incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges. By setting bold, measurable goals and opening them to innovators everywhere, XPRIZE turns prize purses into market-shaping breakthroughs. The XPRIZE model has a track record few philanthropic organizations can match: $519 million in prize purses to date is driving an expected 60X return — $31 billion in projected social and economic impact — placing XPRIZE among the highest-leverage returns of any philanthropic model in the world.
“Prize competitions can create an important bridge between scientific discovery and deployment,” said David Babson, Executive Vice President for Energy, Climate, and Nature at XPRIZE. “Through the Prize Studio, we can identify critical bottlenecks holding back soil innovation, set ambitious and measurable targets around those challenges, and give innovators a platform to demonstrate solutions under real-world conditions. The goal is to help move promising technologies from research and validation toward investment, commercialization, and ultimately adoption at scale.”
The Prize Studio will leverage the NSF ASCEND Engine’s SHIELD test network, including its flagship “living laboratory” in Fraser, Colorado. SHIELD — Soil Health Innovation, Evaluation, and Demonstration — is one of three large-scale applied research programs run by the NSF ASCEND Engine. The 1,500-acre Fraser site is working land owned by Denver Water, a critical ASCEND partner. The site hosts co-located gold-standard measurement technology from university and federal lab partners, including dedicated areas for technology demonstration and validation. Through a collaboration with the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), Colorado State University, and ASCEND-supported startup Cquester Analytics, the site will also be equipped with the baseline data and sensors needed to rapidly assess new technologies’ performance.
“Prize competitions can be great when you have extremely difficult questions, like measuring soil health at scale,” said Sam Malloy, R&D Director at the NSF ASCEND Engine. “With a prize, we can set an ambitious goal and invite a multitude of approaches, with different teams trying different things and competing against each other. We think this is a key tool in our toolkit to accelerate many solutions at scale.”
Babson agreed: “This partnership gives us an opportunity to connect the research and technology development supported through ASCEND with competitive demonstration and ultimately market adoption. The targeted competitions developed through the Studio can help mature critical capabilities, while the larger moonshot we are building toward can challenge teams to integrate and translate those technologies into solutions capable of achieving impact at scale.
About the NSF ASCEND Engine
Led by Innosphere and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), with support from the State of Colorado and the State of Wyoming, the NSF ASCEND Engine is a collaborative initiative focused on driving innovation in environmental sensing and analytics across the Colorado-Wyoming region. The NSF ASCEND Engine brings together a diverse network of partners to develop and commercialize technologies that address critical resilience challenges, foster economic growth and enhance community well-being. Visit www.co-wyengine.org for more information.
About Innosphere
A Colorado-based nonprofit venture development organization—built for entrepreneurs turning discovery into companies. We bring acceleration, capital, infrastructure, and partners together to advance the region and enhance national competitiveness. Founded in 1998, Innosphere operates the Innosphere Accelerator, Innosphere Capital (including Fund III), the NSF ASCEND Engine, and convenes the Colorado Innovation Council across four advanced industry sectors. In 2025, Innosphere supported 102 startups, facilitated $248M in capital raised, and supported 171 full-time jobs. Cumulative impact since 2013: 400+ companies served, 2,000+ jobs created.
Kristen Tatti Innosphere Kristen@innosphere.org
