On hot summer nights in Iran, Anousheh Ansari would sleep outside with her family, hoping to get a cool breeze. Before closing her eyes, she’d look up at the night sky, wondering what was out there in the rest of the universe. “It felt like this infinite, vast darkness on top of my head,” she says. “I wanted to know how the universe was formed and wanted to understand my place in the universe.”
It was those summer nights—and an obsession with Star Trek—that drew Ansari’s attention to space. What is out there? How can we access it? Is the Starfleet Academy real? As Ansari spent her childhood pondering these questions, she began to realize that everything that seems impossible today may simply be something waiting to be built.
Now, as CEO of XPRIZE, Ansari has not only crossed space travel off her list, but her lifelong goal of building a better world for everyone is something she focuses on every day. The journey wasn’t one of chance or luck; instead, Ansari’s is a story of a curious young woman who didn’t fall victim to the limitations of the current world.
Ansari speaking at GESDA event
SAME SUBJECTS, DIFFERENT LANGUAGE
After spending her entire childhood in Iran, 16-year-old Ansari found herself rebuilding her life in a place she’d never visited, hearing a language she’d never spoken. “I had to finish high school in the U.S., and it was terrifying,” she says. “We couldn’t understand what anyone was saying, and yet my sister and I had to figure out how to navigate American education.”
After just a few days in ninth grade, Ansari realized the topics being taught were things she’d already learned in Iran. She already knew the subjects, but they were just in a different language. “I figured out that if I focused on the language of science, I could do well on the tests without knowing English,” she says. In math, science, and physics, Ansari was ahead of her peers, but in classes like English, American history, and government, she was starting from square one.
Once the semester was over, her summer days were filled with hours and hours of English classes. “It only took me three months to learn the language because I was so motivated to do well in school,” she says. Sure enough, the next year, Ansari finished high school, got her diploma, and started college at George Mason University.
Ansari spent nine days aboard the ISS
MANIFESTING SPACE TRAVEL
Long before Ansari became CEO of XPRIZE, she had ties to the organization. In 1994, her family sponsored the first XPRIZE competition, which revolutionized commercial space travel, making it more accessible for average people. With a $10 million prize, innovators from around the world entered the competition and, eventually, a U.S.-based team won the prize.
Years later, at an XPRIZE banquet, Ansari was approached by a passenger planning to travel to space with the Russian Space Agency. He asked her if she wanted to be part of the backup crew in case anything happened to him. In order to prepare, Ansari had to commit to a year of training with real astronauts. It was a no-brainer for the young girl who spent all those years staring up at the night sky.
For the next year, Ansari spent hours in a classroom. She was learning everything from the capsule’s system and operations to repairs, emergency training, and even physical conditioning. “I was also taking Russian language classes,” she says. “Everyone on the mission spoke Russian, so I had to be able to speak and read it.” But the coolest part of the training? The zero-gravity flights.
When the training ended, Ansari was nowhere near ready to say goodbye to this opportunity, but she was only a backup and didn’t have a seat on the capsule. “I was so depressed to be going home,” she says. “But then my phone rang.” It was someone on the team offering her a spot.
“I thought it was a practical joke at first, but then all I could do was scream, YES!” Three weeks later, after completing the quarantine procedures, Ansari found herself strapped inside a capsule, ready to launch. After two days of travel, she spent nine days on the International Space Station, just as much a member of the crew as anyone else there.
BUILDING SOMETHING WITHOUT A NAME
Getting to space was a lifelong dream, but once she was there, the true gift Ansari received was a perspective shift. “From space, you realize that the world we live in is such a unique place in the universe and every life on earth depends on this beautiful, fragile environment that has made it possible for life to thrive,” she says with wonder.
Upon returning, Ansari was ready to step into uncharted territory as a technology entrepreneur. One of the businesses she created was Prodea. At the time, there wasn’t a phrase that could accurately describe what Prodea was doing but, today, we’d refer to it as the Internet of Things. Ansari’s team focused on building the software to enable Voiceover IP, a technology that would make international calls cheaper by using the internet. “The concept was to bring the power of the internet to talk to all devices and control devices for health applications, home security, education, and everything in between,” Ansari says.
Unfortunately, without an understanding of this technology, the market wasn’t quite ready to accept it. Further, the hardware needed to support these advancements was slow to develop, making it hard for Ansari to grow Prodea in the way that she desired. In a way, Prodea was illustrative of what Ansari is at her core: ahead of her time.
Ansari with XPrize executives at the NYSE
ACHIEVING EQUITABLE ABUNDANCE
After 30 years, XPRIZE has proven its unique model can make unparalleled impact. It hosts cutting-edge competitions for the world’s best innovators to do the impossible. The seven current priority competition areas are: climate and energy, health, learning and society, deep technology and quantum, food, water and waste, space and exploration, and biodiversity and conservation. When the competitions conclude, industry-expert judges select winners who receive the prize purse and are given access to funding to scale their project. In 30 years, XPRIZE has launched 30 competitions offering over $500 million in prize money, and achieving an impact of more than 30 times on every dollar of collective purses.
Right now, there’s an active XPRIZE Carbon Removal that will be awarded in the next year. “The goal is to scale carbon removal technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere or the oceans at a gigaton level by 2050,” Ansari says. A major component of this competition is scale. “We’re always encouraging our innovators to think about how they can scale their ideas and make them more accessible to everyone. Our goal is to cultivate equitable abundance that’s available for all.”
Also ongoing is the XPRIZE Wildfire competition, encouraging participants to investigate how drones, space-based detection, and AI can be used to detect a high-risk wildfire, assess and understand the danger levels associated with it, and inform proper management within 10 minutes. “Essentially, we want to get rid of destructive wildfires worldwide,” Ansari says.
Ansari in 2024
HOPE: AN ANTIDOTE FOR DESPAIR
For Ansari, XPRIZE is the center of her personal universe. She has put everything into growing the organization, bringing together the ecosystem of entrepreneurs that exists today, and building a global platform to solve humanity’s biggest challenges. But as much as it means to Ansari on a personal level, the driving force behind her work is a desire to give people hope.
“Our young people are so depressed and down,” she says. “All they hear about is how the future doesn’t look bright, but that’s not the way to inspire and it’s not the way to move forward.” Ansari has always been able to imagine a future that doesn’t yet exist, and she’s used that vision to redesign the years ahead. With her leading the way, it might be time to feel hopeful again.
