Competition design will aim to advance sustainable, resilient, and ethical recovery, processing, and reuse practices as global demand is projected to quadruple by 2040.
LOS ANGELES, CA, April 15, 2026 - XPRIZE, the world's leader in designing and operating large-scale incentive competitions to solve humanity's grand challenges, today announced a collaboration with Amazon for XPRIZE Critical Minerals—a global competition to be designed to accelerate scalable solutions that transform how critical minerals are recovered, processed, and reused. Critical minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements, are essential to clean energy technologies, advanced technologies, and national security, yet their supply chains remain highly concentrated and vulnerable to disruption.
Demand for these materials is projected to rise sharply over the coming decades, increasing pressure on already constrained and concentrated supply chains. They already account for an estimated 20–40% of upstream cost and environmental effects across advanced manufacturing, and more than 50% in electric vehicles and consumer electronics. Today’s supply chains expose growing risks to supply resilience, geopolitical stability, environmental performance, and human rights, while constraining both the speed and sustainability of the clean energy transition. In many regions, mineral production and processing is associated with ecosystem impacts, unsafe labor conditions, and displacement of local and indigenous communities.
“How we source, and scale critical minerals will shape the future of our society. They are essential to the transition to electrification, AI, and data centers among other critical sectors,” said Anousheh Ansari, CEO of XPRIZE. “Our collaboration with Amazon is grounded in a shared commitment to people and planet, and through XPRIZE Critical Minerals, we will design a competition to attract innovators worldwide to develop solutions that strengthen a sustainable supply chain that scale to meet future demand without compromising the health of our planet and our society.”
Amazon's collaboration enables the design and development of XPRIZE Critical Minerals—including defining priority focus areas, evaluation criteria, and pathways to scale winning solutions globally.
"Critical minerals are foundational to transitioning to cleaner energy, but today's supply chains weren't designed for the scale or speed of tomorrow's demand," said Kara Hurst, Chief Sustainability Officer at Amazon. “The XPRIZE Critical Minerals competition aims to mobilize innovators worldwide to develop solutions that don't just recover and reuse these materials more effectively—but fundamentally redesign how they flow through the global economy. This competition is about building supply chain resilience, protecting human rights in mining communities, and ensuring the technologies powering decarbonization are designed for sustainability and economic viability."
While this is the first step to design this critically important competition, in order to launch the competition globally, XPRIZE is actively seeking additional mission-aligned funders, government entities, and strategic organizations committed to strengthening responsible global supply chains. To learn more about the prize, visit https://xprize.org/competitions/criticalminerals or contact criticalminerals@xprize.org.
About XPRIZE
XPRIZE is the recognized global leader in designing and executing large-scale competitions to solve humanity's greatest challenges. For over 30 years, our unique model has democratized crowd-sourced innovation and scientifically scalable solutions that accelerate a more equitable and abundant future. Donate, learn more, and co-architect a world of abundance with us at xprize.org.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.