X PRIZE Foundation moves to West L.A.
By CHRISTINA WALKER Special to the Daily Press
DOWNTOWN X PRIZE Foundation will no longer be calling Santa Monica home.
Citing the need for more space, the nonprofit, which specializes in rewarding novel and forward thinking achievements that benefit humanity, will be relocating to Playa Vista at the end of the month.
“We loved our time here in Santa Monica,” said Sarah Evans, spokesperson for X PRIZE. “We just need more space for our growing company. We’re at maximum capacity.”
Many of the staff at X PRIZE live in Santa Monica and Evans acknowledges that it’s a great place to live and work. However, the company was unable expand in its present location off of Fourth Street near Santa Monica Boulevard and went in search of new headquarters.
X PRIZE Foundation was established in 1995 for the purpose of using money as the motivation for great invention. The company was modeled after past cash rewards that incited great human endeavors such as the Orleig Prize offered by Raymond Orleig in 1919 to the first person to complete a nonstop trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris.
X PRIZE’s latest contest offers a $25,000 reward in conjunction with Prize Capital, LLC for a YouTube video that proposes solutions to energy and environmental problems. This prize is small in comparison to typical X PRIZE rewards. In 2004 X PRIZE awarded $10 million for the creation and launch of SpaceShipOne, a non-government funded space ship.
Fox Interactive Media and Belkin International are two new neighbors that X PRIZE will join in its new West Los Angeles home.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 17, 2008. Read the original PDF.