October 18, 2026
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Luckey funds $10 million XPRIZE on communicating with animals

Tracks the forthcoming 10 million dollar XPRIZE funded by Palmer Luckey on understanding how animals think and communicating with them, including trained and wild animals: its announcement, rules, targets, teams and any results.

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Overview

At Moonshots Live on September 25, 2026, Peter Diamandis said Palmer Luckey is funding a new 10 million dollar XPRIZE that would be formally announced in about a month. Luckey gave a preview but kept the details secret, saying there are some good twists. The prize will be about understanding how animals think. Its goal is to communicate with them 10 times better than the current state of the art for the smartest species, covering wild animals in their own language as well as trained animals. Luckey said he did not want to spend his money on the race to push AI forward, because AI models are already well funded, while biological intelligence beyond humans gets too little attention. He suggested the work could help AI become more power- and time-efficient. When this was recorded, the prize had not launched. Its rules, twists, launch date and scoring were not public, and no outside source had described it.

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    Diamandis previewed a new 10 million dollar XPRIZE funded by Palmer Luckey, due to be announced about a month later. Luckey said it would reward communicating with animals 10 times better than the current state of the art for the smartest species, including wild animals in their own language. He said he preferred funding biological intelligence over AI models, which he considers well covered. He kept the rules and twists secret.

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