Speakers Peter Diamandis: Space activist

Peter Diamandis runs the X Prize Foundation, which offers large cash incentive prizes to inventors who can solve grand challenges like space flight, low-cost mobile medical diagnostics and oil spill cleanup. He is the chair of Singularity University, which teaches executives and grad students about exponentially growing technologies.

Why you should listen to him:

Watch the live onstage debate with Paul Gilding that followed Peter Diamandis' 2012 TEDTalk >>

Peter Diamandis is the founder and chair of the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is simply "to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity." By offering a big cash prize for a specific accomplishment, the X Prize stimulates competition and excitement around some of the planet's most important goals. Diamandis is also co-founder and chairman of Singularity University which runs Exponential Technologies Executive and Graduate Student Programs.

Diamandis' background is in space exploration -- before the X Prize, he ran a company that studied low-cost launching technologies and Zero-G which offers the public the chance to train like an astronaut and experience weightlessness. But though the X Prize's first $10 million went to a space-themed challenge, Diamandis' goal now is to extend the prize into health care, social policy, education and many other fields that could use a dose of competitive innovation.

Email to a friend »

Quotes by Peter Diamandis

“It’s during our lifetime that we’re moving off this planet. Please join us in this epic adventure.”
Watch this talk »
“Life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by disaster. … I think the human race doesn’t have a future if it doesn’t go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space.” — quoting Stephen Hawking
Watch this talk »
“We are living on a precious jewel.”
Watch this talk »
“I'm not saying we don't have our set of problems — climate crisis, species extinction, water and energy shortage — we surely do. [But] ultimately we knock them down.”
Watch this talk »
“Creating abundance [is] not about creating a life of luxury for everybody on this planet; it's about creating a life of possibility.”
Watch this talk »
“A Masai warrior on a cellphone in the middle of Kenya has better mobile comm than President Reagan did 25 years ago.”
Watch this talk »