What do you get when you have poker icons, entrepreneurs, celebrities, and venture capitalists all rubbing elbows under one private mansion’s roof? Easy pickin’ for the poker champions? Maybe. Or maybe the X Prize Foundation Fundraiser. On April 24th, the X Prize Foundation will host their casino night fundraiser at a private Pacific Palisades mansion with such poker icons as Annie Duke, Andy Bloch, Chris Ferguson, Rafe Furst, and Phil Gordon in attendance.
The X Prize foundation was founded in 1996, and it’s mission is to seek out new life and new civilizations. Uh, sorry. It’s mission is to bring radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. Basically, they create and manage prizes that challenge innovators to solve problems that we face today. The X prize is a $10 million+ award given to the first team to achieve a goal such as to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days for under $10k per genome, which would be a huge step in personalized medicine. The foundation also has an X Prize for developing clean, production-capable vehicles. Their future X prizes include challenges in energy and environment, exploration, education and global development, and life sciences.
Sound crazy? It’s not. The X Prize model is rooted in history. Large cash prizes have been offered to spur innovation such as breakthroughs in navigation in the 1700s, breakthroughs in chemical engineering in the 1800s, and breakthroughs in aviation in the 1900s. It works, and if it helps all mankind, then I’m all for it.
If you want to attend the foundation’s X Prize casino shindig and have a high roller experience, you can buy tickets on their site. Their prizes for the evening include a trip to space on Virgin Galactic, a 2010 Tesla Roadster, and getting your genome sequenced.
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