Bill Gates has launched the Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize, offering a $1 million award for the most promising artificial-intelligence tool capable of mining decades of global Alzheimer’s data to accelerate drug and biomarker discovery. The competition is funded through Gates Ventures and administered by the non-profit Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative (ADDI). Entrants—ranging from solo machine-learning engineers to large research teams—are asked to build autonomous AI “agents” that can plan, reason and act on existing patient datasets. The winning solution must be released free of charge on ADDI’s ADWorkbench platform, giving scientists worldwide open access to the technology. Applications open 19 August 2025. Semifinalists will present their prototypes at the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease conference in San Diego this December, and finalists will compete for the top prize at the Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s meeting in Copenhagen in March 2026. Gates, whose late father lived with Alzheimer’s, said leveraging AI could dramatically shorten the time from data collection to therapeutic breakthroughs. ADDI interim executive director Niranjan Bose added that the initiative aims to harness “a unique opportunity” to accelerate dementia research at a moment when more than seven million Americans are already living with the disease.