On October 29, the Boston Center for the Arts hosted what will become an annual cornerstone of the city’s Tough Tech Week: the inaugural Planet Home Gala, culminating in the announcement of a $1 million prize for breakthrough technologies addressing planetary resilience and human health.

The evening brought together an impressive cross-section of global innovation leaders — from island nation deputy premiers and UN Sids-Dock Secretary Generals to former Fortune 500 CFOs and CEOs, from MIT quantum researchers to members of Nobel Prize teams — signaling Boston’s continued ascendance as a hub for mission-driven deep technology ventures.

A new prize for long-horizon innovation

Planet Home, an innovation venture studio that bridges culture, science, engineering, and investment, revealed the Planet Home Prize as an annual award explicitly designed to recognize breakthrough technologies in how humanity eats, makes, moves, and lives. The prize addresses what founders identify as a critical gap: deep-tech solutions often require long development cycles despite their promise of outsized societal and global impact, yet face significant funding challenges as an asset class.

“The debut of the Planet Home Prize marks a major moment for the Tough Tech sustainability and investor communities,” says Dr. Daniel Doneson, managing partner of Planet Home. “By bringing together pioneers in AI, science, finance, and philanthropy at our gala, we demonstrated what’s possible when innovation is driven by purpose. The launch of the Planet Home Prize is not just about recognizing breakthrough technologies — it’s about igniting a movement to build the future.”

An international panel of expert judges will evaluate submissions annually, with the award presented each year in Boston at the Planet Home Gala during Tough Tech Week.

From island nations to AI ethics

The evening, hosted by Emmy-nominated comedian and cultural commentator Kiran Deol, featured four substantive panel discussions that reflected the breadth of challenges facing tough tech innovators.

“SIDS Nations Leading Sustainable Innovations” brought The Honorable Walter Roban, former deputy premier of Bermuda, into conversation with Dr. Albert Binger, UN secretary-general of SIDS DOCK. The discussion spotlighted how small island developing states are pioneering marine conservation, renewable energy, and “Blue Prosperity” initiatives — often serving as test beds for technologies like wave energy systems that could scale globally.

Perhaps the evening’s most philosophically charged conversation came during “Will AI Be Good?” moderated by Dr. Hilary C. Robinson, associate professor of law and sociology at Northeastern University. Dr. Xinghui Yin, research scientist directing the Quantum Measurement Group at MIT, joined De Kai of HKUST and Berkeley’s International Computer Science Institute, and Mario Vuksan, CEO and founder of cybersecurity leader, ReversingLabs, and Stefan Krause, partner and CEO of Factory Network and former CFO of BMW and Deutsche Bank.

De Kai offered a provocative characterization of the current moment: “We each have 100 AIs in our phones. They are like unparented feral children and the biggest influencers on earth.”

Krause struck a more optimistic note about collective action: “At Factory Berlin, we’re proving what’s possible when technology and creativity evolve together. The future belongs to communities that can turn vision into action at scale — and what we witnessed in Boston with Planet Home shows that purpose-driven innovation is the way forward.”

Following the money

The “Moving $250B into Tough Tech” panel addressed perhaps the most pragmatic challenge facing deep tech founders: how to mobilize sufficient patient capital for decade-long development timelines. David Doneson, CEO of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science, and Mark Veich, CEO of CobiCure and formerly of Deerfield Management, examined how philanthropy and innovation capital are increasingly flowing toward deep-tech solutions for global health and sustainability and how blended financial models of “catalytic capital” are a key to unlock billions of dollars of tough tech venture funding and drive innovative start-up success.

“Living Labs – Building a Sustainable Future” featured Valentina Videva Dufresne, president of Zehnder Group North America, articulated a design philosophy increasingly common among tough tech companies: “Our mission is to deliver a healthy indoor climate, especially healthy air, in an aesthetic, whisper-quiet, comfortable, and energy efficient way—and this requires solving hard technology hurdles. We feel a true responsibility to engineer and design for a world where human well-being meets sustainability—not as competing priorities, but as one integrated design principle for living better on this planet.”

Portfolio companies showcase systems-level solutions

Planet Home, led by cofounders Antony Randall, Gabrielle Hull, and Dr. Daniel Doneson as managing partner, operates as an innovation studio using culture to accelerate ventures that are “breakthrough, science-backed, and engineered to scale.” Several portfolio companies are currently in residence at The Engine, MIT’s tough tech accelerator.

The gala featured three local Planet Home portfolio companies exemplifying different approaches to planetary-scale challenges:

DataEnergy is designing next-generation AI data centers — high-performance, modular colocation sites powered entirely by renewable hydropower. As AI models like GPT-4 consume explosive amounts of electricity and water, DataEnergy’s approach optimizes everything from cooling to waste-heat reuse, aiming to establish new infrastructure standards that outperform legacy fossil-powered facilities.

SEABASED is at the forefront of Blue Energy with a patented wave-to-grid system that harnesses ocean wave power — a resource that is far more consistent in baseload than solar or wind. Following full-scale demonstrations in Sweden and Ghana, SEABASED is advancing toward commercial rollout with utility-scale wave parks under development for Bermuda and Barbados.

Malstrom Molecules tackles hard-to-recycle plastics through a kinetic conversion process that transforms waste into clean petroleum while generating energy to power its own operations to be used for circular plastics with vastly superior unit economics. The company has achieved ISCC-PLUS certification, the highest sustainability standard in its sector.

The capstone moment

The evening’s climax arrived when Dr. Maria Galou-Lameyer — part of two teams honored with the Nobel Prize and currently executive director at Merck — took the stage to formally announce the $1 million Planet Home Prize.

The event was supported by sponsors Factory Berlin and Zehnder Group North America.

Planet Home will announce details about the prize submission process and the composition of its international judging panel in coming months. The Planet Home gala and prize will be an annual fixture of Boston’s Tough Tech Week.

For a city that has positioned itself as a global leader in deep technology innovation — from quantum computing to synthetic biology — the Planet Home Prize represents another institutional pillar supporting long-horizon, mission-driven ventures that traditional venture capital often struggles to fund in early stages.

Whether the prize achieves its stated ambition of “igniting a movement” remains to be seen. But the Oct. 29 gathering suggested that Boston’s tough tech ecosystem — spanning universities, accelerators, investors, and increasingly, purpose-driven studios like Planet Home — continues to deepen its institutional infrastructure for supporting technologies that may take decades to mature but promise truly transformative positive impact for the planet.