Peter Diamandis has built a career around a simple but powerful question: what if we could incentivize people to think bigger? As founder of the XPRIZE Foundation, co-founder and executive chairman of Singularity University, and someone Fortune named among the "World's 50 Greatest Leaders," he's spent decades pushing entrepreneurs away from incremental thinking toward transformative moonshots. In a recent conversation, Diamandis opened up about the origins of XPRIZE, his Bitcoin conviction, and why he believes we're giving birth to a new species on this planet.

From Personal Frustration to Billion-Dollar Prizes

The XPRIZE story begins with Diamandis' own disappointment. Back in the early 1990s, he wanted to get to space but realized that unless you were a government astronaut, your chances were essentially zero. That's when he stumbled upon the story of Charles Lindbergh, who crossed the Atlantic in 1927 to win a prize. The lightbulb moment: create a prize for private spaceflight.

"It took a decade to go from the original idea to being won, but it kicked off the commercial spaceflight industry, suborbital flights and then created the regulatory regime and attracted people to the field," Diamandis explained.

Since that first success, XPRIZE has expanded dramatically. The foundation has launched about $300 million in various competitions, tackling challenges that range from mapping the ocean floor to pulling water and CO2 out of the atmosphere. One particularly ambitious prize focused on teaching kids reading, writing, and arithmetic in remote areas without adults or traditional schools. Most recently, they launched an XPRIZE to detect and autonomously put out wildfires.

The scale has only grown. Diamandis noted they've launched over half a billion dollars in prizes total, including the $100 million Carbon Removal XPRIZE funded by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation (awarded in 2025), plus the $101 million Healthspan XPRIZE announced in 2023.

"It's really about incentivizing entrepreneurs to try and take on bigger moonshots," he said. "One of my missions is: can I incentivize people to think bigger? I don't want people to build another photo sharing app. Go and cure one of a disease, go and transform food, water, energy, health care, education, because you can."

What's Next for XPRIZE?

Diamandis isn't running out of ideas for grand challenges. He's exploring XPRIZEs in areas like happiness, developing technology that can detect when people are happy and run experiments to maximize it. Earthquake prediction is on the list. So is detecting and deflecting asteroids before they become problematic.

One AI-focused XPRIZE that particularly excites him: building a system for reliable two-way communication with animals. The possibilities span food, water, healthcare, education, space exploration, and ocean exploration. Anywhere progress isn't moving fast enough becomes a candidate for prize-driven innovation.

A recurring theme throughout his work is extending the healthy human lifespan. When Diamandis posed a question on social media asking what people would do with an additional 40 healthy years, he had his own answer ready.

"I have two 14-year-old boys, so watching them and supporting them in their life is fun. I'd love to see where we go in space next. I'd love to see us on the Moon, space colonies. I'd love to go to the Moon and start a city there," he said.

But beyond family and space colonies, he's energized by the technological breakthroughs on the horizon. Brain-computer interfaces fascinate him, especially the potential for humans to connect and upload themselves into the cloud. "This is a future that all our greatest dreams are, science fiction novels will all materialize," he noted.

Bitcoin: From 2010 Discovery to 2014 Investment

Diamandis first learned about Bitcoin (BTC) around 2010, though he admits he wishes he'd started investing back then. He actually began putting money in around 2014, the same year he gave Bitcoin to 500 entrepreneurs and CEOs in his Abundance 360 program.

"In 2014 I gave everybody some Bitcoin, I had a Bitcoin ATM machine and gave everybody a wallet with probably a half a Bitcoin," he recalled. The reason? Simple learning psychology. "People learn about things that they have."

His current crypto portfolio runs about 80% Bitcoin and 20% Ethereum (ETH). He views cryptocurrency as more than just digital money. "I think it's a mechanism by which it's a stabilizing factor. I believe it's a form of energy that's immutable and transmittable. For all the reasons that fiat money is so unstable and so challenging, Bitcoin solves all of those."

Diamandis frames Bitcoin's trajectory through his Six Ds of Exponentials framework. When something becomes digitized, it starts out deceptive, then becomes disruptive, and eventually demonetizes, dematerializes, and democratizes. Bitcoin, he argues, fits this pattern perfectly as digitized money.

Where are we in that progression? "We're definitely going from deceptive to disruptive. We're starting to see adoption by institutions. And it's not a matter of if, it's only a matter of when," he said, noting he's been "consistently investing in it" though not at the level of his fraternity brother Michael Saylor at Strategy (MSTR).

While he experimented with other altcoins beyond Ethereum for a while, he's since pulled back. These days his investment focus has shifted more toward his venture funds. Bold Capital Partners manages about $550 million investing in exponential technologies and biotech. He also runs a Bold longevity growth fund for later-stage investments and a venture studio focused on AI. "So, I have plenty of startup exposure," he explained.

The Intersection of AI and Blockchain

When asked about connections between AI and blockchain, Diamandis didn't hesitate. "Of course." He sees blockchain playing a critical role in content validation as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated at manipulating reality.

"The challenges AI is so incredibly good at falsifying or reinventing reality. How do we know whether something is absolutely real and unmodified? And I think blockchain will play an incredibly important role there," he said.

His venture portfolio includes exposure to quantum technologies as well. Some companies he's invested in through his fund, like Intellectual Medicine (which uses AI to generate molecules for drug development), have quantum tech divisions. That makes sense given humans are fundamentally quantum systems. "Quantum chemistry, quantum computation is going to help us understand how molecules interact with each other and on cell surfaces," he noted.

He's also an investor in a SPAC that took quantum computing company D-Wave public in 2022.

AGI by 2029?

On the question of whether AI can ever be conscious, Diamandis offers a definitive yes. "I think we're going to see artificial intelligence develop, what we believe is consciousness. I think true human and superhuman intelligence is not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. I think we're giving birth to a new species on this planet."

His timeline for artificial general intelligence (AGI) aligns with his business partner Ray Kurzweil's prediction: by 2029. "I think it's anywhere from now through 2029 is a good bet," Diamandis said.

He points out that if we'd gone back ten years with Chat GPT and GPT-4, people would have declared it passed the Turing test and qualified as real intelligence. But because the progress happened gradually, we've simply adapted and accepted it as normal AI. It's the same phenomenon that makes us call a dishwasher a dishwasher rather than recognizing it as a robot.

As for the AI tools he uses daily, Diamandis keeps it practical. He's using the same tools most people access, whether from Google (GOOGL), OpenAI (backed by Microsoft, MSFT), or Stability AI.

But the technology he's most excited about developing involves AI analyzing massive health datasets to make predictions about what's happening in your body. "To take all of these data and to help personalize your medicines and supplements, what you eat, what you do," he explained.

Healthcare and Education: Ripe for AI Disruption

Healthcare and education stand out as the two industries Diamandis believes most deserve disruption and reinvention, with AI positioned to do exactly that.

On education, he envisions AI enabling personalized learning at a level impossible today. "Our AI educators will know our favorite sports colors, language skills, what we know and what we don't know. Be with us to educate us 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

The future he sees involves integrating AI and VR to create virtualized learning experiences that feel magical, making learning experiential rather than passive. The next step? "Connecting my brain to the AI, where I'm able to just think and Google and be able to really increase my cognitive capacity. These are insane ideas that are all going to happen, and the speed at which they're developing is massively accelerating."

Doesn't that sound a bit scary, though? The prospect of being totally controlled by AI and machines that know all our preferences? Diamandis doesn't think so.

"The question is: are we going to lose our free will or are we going to increase our abilities? I think we're heading towards augmented intelligence as the terminology versus artificial intelligence. For me, it's an exciting time to be alive. Playing and having fun and trying to really uplift humanity."

Will AI Make Us Lazy or Ambitious?

The concern about AI creating a lazy society that relies on machines for everything, potentially splitting into a class that engages with technology and another that doesn't, is one Diamandis has thought about carefully. His answer? He doesn't know for certain, but his optimism shows through.

"I think that there will be those people, who become lazier and those who dream bigger. But it's no different than mechanical or automation. Did cars and electricity make us lazier? Or did it just enable us to do more wide and varied things?"

He argues most people would say we're busier today than ever before. Imagine going back a hundred years and telling people they'd have cars instead of horses, tractors to plow fields, and electricity to run vacuum cleaners and dishwashers. The prediction would have been that everyone would sit around vacationing all day. But that's not what happened.

"We create more and varied things for us to do and we up level the things that we can do," Diamandis explained. "The human spirit doesn't like being lazy. It likes going after bigger and higher function challenges."

That fundamental optimism about human nature underpins everything Diamandis does, from incentivizing moonshot thinking through XPRIZE to investing in longevity research and embracing emerging technologies. Whether it's Bitcoin solving the problems of fiat currency, AI augmenting human intelligence, or blockchain validating reality in an age of deepfakes, he sees technology as a tool for uplift rather than control. The question isn't whether these changes will happen but whether we'll rise to meet them with ambition rather than complacency. Based on Diamandis' track record of pushing people toward bigger thinking, he's betting we will.