Designed to modernize and accelerate education for every learner, this prize challenged teams to develop new methods for rapidly testing and scaling effective digital learning tools to deliver better outcomes to learners around the world.
Impact
$8.7M in added wages projected within the first year
3,500+ workers trained through finalist programs
Average wages increased from $8.80/hour to $19/hour
Winner
Four finalists—Dignified Work, Isotonik, SHIFA360, and VITAL—shared $1.5M for reskilling workers in healthcare, tech, and essential services. Their AI-, AR-, and online learning programs accelerated training and job placement.
Awarded Teams
Rapid Reskilling
Sponsors
Sponsors fund the prize journey from bold idea to breakthrough—shaping each competition, supporting global teams, and accelerating solutions that scale. Their backing powers impact that lasts well beyond the prize.
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Partners
Partners play a hands-on role in our prizes—co-designing competitions, supporting operations, and helping scale solutions with their expertise, resources, and global reach.
Advisory Board
Barrier
Millions of vulnerable workers face job loss from automation, economic shifts, and crises like COVID-19. Traditional training is slow, costly, and inaccessible, leaving those most at risk without pathways to stable, in-demand careers.
Breakthrough
Novel solutions created affordable, tech-enabled programs that reskilled workers in months, not years—boosting wages, meeting employer needs, and opening career pathways for underserved communities.
About the Prize
The $5M XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling competition set out to transform workforce development by training large numbers of displaced or vulnerable workers for in-demand jobs—fast. Teams were challenged to reskill 5,000 people across three industries in just 10 months.
Although no team met the full criteria for the Grand Prize, the competition delivered significant real-world results. Four finalists shared $1.5M for programs projected to generate $8.7M in increased wages, averaging $20,000 more per worker annually.
Innovations included SHIFA360, whose four-week online program prepared learners for roles like community health worker and medical secretary, and Isotonik, which used AR and AI to tailor healthcare training to individual learning styles.
By proving that rapid, tech-enabled training can drive substantial wage growth, the competition offered a blueprint for rethinking workforce systems to match the pace of change in today’s economy.
Prize Schedule
Launched in 2020, the competition concluded in 2022. While no Grand Prize was awarded, four finalists shared $1.5M for their innovations, improving skills, wages, and job readiness for thousands of U.S. workers.
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