Urban Future Prize Competiton

Climate change: solve it with us.

Join us at the Urban Future Summit and watch our finalists pitch for a chance at $50,000.

Applications Closed

The Competition

The Urban Future Prize Competition

The Urban Future Lab is pleased to announce, for the eighth consecutive year, the Urban Future Prize Competition, which seeks to find the brightest climatetech startups and, through the generous support of The New York Community Trust, MUFG Bank, Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas), and NYU Tandon School of Engineering, award two winners with $50,000 cash prizes. These awardees will also receive admission into the ACRE Incubator, New York's longest-running and most successful climatetech program.

New this year, we will be running a prize track explicitly focused on climate adaptation and resilience, the Future Resilience Prize. Most funding to date has gone to address climate mitigation (e.g. decreasing emissions), but very little funding has gone to innovations that support the adaptation side of the climate crisis. According to UN estimates, the climate adaptation financing gap is as high as $366B annually. With the Future Resilience Prize, we hope to spotlight innovative climate adaptation and resilience solutions, catalyze more private investment into this space, and ensure a positive impact on vulnerable communities most adversely impacted by climate change.

All other climatetech startups can still apply for our generalist track, the Future Solutions Prize.

New York's forward-thinking state and city governments, thriving tech sector, and massive market make it one of the top startup climatetech economies in the world. The city has become the ideal laboratory for creating sustainable solutions to the world’s most pressing climate challenges.

Meet our Finalists

Future Resilience Prize

Focused on innovative climate adaptation and resilience solutions, the winner of this prize track will be identified based on its impact on vulnerable communities.

Aquaria Technologies builds resilient water infrastructure for cities by harvesting air. Using solar-powered boxes, they produce up to 500,000 gallons of water daily from the sky. Vulnerable communities most at risk from climate change struggle to restore their water supply because of limited capital and geography. Aquaria can provide immediate access to clean water to these communities.
Blip Energy's plug-and-play smart battery gives modern households backup power and lower electric bills. One in seven American households is living in energy poverty, foregoing essential purchases to afford energy bills. Blip is a low cost solution designed to work in any home because they believe everyone deserves affordable, reliable power.
Faura helps assess the risk of properties in natural disaster zones (wildfires, hurricanes, floods, etc) to help insurance policyholders mitigate their risk and better inform underwriters. Faura helps homeowners qualify for better and cheaper insurance by making their properties more climate resilient.
Frontline Gig is an AI-driven talent intelligence platform for blue-collar work in climate. Like the “Uber for green jobs”, Frontline Gig is a workforce development platform specifically for underserved communities who want more flexible apprenticeships in the green economy.
Kind Designs creates 3D-printed living seawalls that protect coastal cities from flooding and rising sea levels. They aim to democratize seawalls, making them affordable to the 507 coastal communities globally that are at risk of needing to migrate inland.

Future Solutions Prize

Acknowledging that the climate issue requires cross disciplinary solutions, another winner will be chosen from our climate sector agnostic track.

DaisyChain Energy is a turn-key solar, electrification and decarbonization solution for multi-unit residential buildings.
Drive Powerline uses GenerativeAI and neural networks to offer an advanced co-pilot for operation of battery portfolios, and an enhanced auto-pilot for end-to-end automatic operation of battery portfolios in power markets.
Adena Power is an energy storage provider using U.S. raw materials and manufacturing to deliver sodium batteries to utilities at grid scale.
Helix Earth Technologies is a NASA-based technology that eliminates >50% of the energy used by commercial air conditioners.

Prizes

The Prizes

The Urban Future Prize Competition seeks entrepreneurs who are building startups that contribute to a more resilient and sustainable planet. Two non-dilutive prizes of $50K each will be awarded to two companies who embody the drive and mission needed to address the greatest challenge of our time.

Climate Sector-Agnostic

The Future Solutions Prize

The Future Resilience Prize

The ACRE Incubator

New York’s leading climatetech incubator.

A $50,000 cash prize will be awarded to two grand prize winners. The Future Solutions Prize and Future Resilience Prize winners will also join the ACRE Incubator and gain access to a community of expert advisors, mentors, and investors who will help to scale their businesses and accelerate their paths to success. ACRE companies have raised more than $1.9 billion in follow-on funding, created over 2,800+ green jobs, and have a survival rate of close to 90% since the program’s inception in 2009.

Learn more

Urban Future Prize Winner Benefits

01.

$50,000 Prize

$50,000 cash prize with zero-equity stake, so you can focus on your company’s next steps.

02.

ACRE Incubator Membership

Acceptance and membership into New York City’s premier climatetech incubator, with incubator specific benefits and unmatched startup support.

03.

Recognition and Opportunities

Ecosystem recognition, media opportunities, and access to introductions to key partners in the public and private sectors.

Urban Future Prize Competition Jurors

The Jurors

Urban Future Prize finalists will be invited to pitch to an esteemed jury of climate investors. We are pleased to announce members of our 2024 Urban Future Prize Competition Jury.

Anastasia Istratova, Principal, Fifth Wall
Nneka Kibuule, Principal, Aligned Climate Capital
Katie MacDonald, Co-founder, Tailwind
Shawn Xu, Partner, Lowercarbon Capital

Pitch Event

The Urban Future Summit

Join us at the Urban Future Prize Competition’s annual pitch event.

The Urban Future Prize Competition culminates with the Urban Future Summit, an event for climate entrepreneurs, technologists, government officials, business leaders, investors, and innovators in New York City. This year, on October 24th, the Urban Future Summit will feature pitches from finalists of the 2024 Urban Future Prize Competition; an industry panel discussion; and showcase the successes of past participants of the Prize Competition. We will also highlight the commitment of our sponsors as leaders who take constructive measures to improve and benefit our planet.

RSVP for the 2024 Urban Future Summit

See Last Year's Event

Competition Timeline

Competition Sponsors

Join a community of innovators.

Past winners, competitors, and finalists - all changing the climatetech world, one innovation at a time.

“Now is the time to focus on implementation of climate solutions and Urban Future Lab has an incredible track record in supporting the do-ers at the leading edge. We’re honored to join UFL’s portcos and excited to fast-forward our part in creating a just transition.” – Bomee Jung, CEO & Co-Founder, Cadence OneFive, 2023 Winner

“Winning the Future Vision Prize brings LimeLoop one step closer to delivering a world without single-use packaging. The prize will support our buildout of the logistics infrastructure necessary to accelerate the scale of reusable smart packaging, speeding up when you can expect to find a LimeLoop package on a doorstep near you.” – Chantal Emmanuel, CTO & Co-Founder, LimeLoop, 2022 Winner