Peter Diamandis

Peter H. Diamandis ( DEE-ə-MAN-diss; born May 20, 1961) is an American engineer, physician, and entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder and chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, and the cofounder and executive chairman of Singularity University. He is also cofounder and former CEO of the Zero Gravity Corporation, cofounder and vice chairman of Space Adventures Ltd., founder and chairman of the Rocket Racing League, cofounder of the International Space University, cofounder of Planetary Resources, cofounder of Celularity, founder of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, and vice chairman and cofounder of Human Longevity, Inc.

Diamandis was born in the Bronx, New York City, to Greek immigrants. At age 12, Diamandis won first place in a rocket design competition.

After graduating from Great Neck North High School in 1979, Diamandis attended Hamilton College for his first year, then transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study biology and physics. During his second year at MIT in 1980, he cofounded Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.

Diamandis graduated from MIT in 1983 and entered Harvard Medical School to pursue his MD through the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. During his second year of medical school, he cofounded the Space Generation Foundation to promote projects and programs that would help the "Space Generation"—all those born since the flight of Sputnik—get off the planet.

In 1986, Diamandis put his medical degree on hold and returned to MIT to pursue a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics, conducting research at NASA Johnson Space Center, the MIT Man Vehicle Laboratory and MIT's Whitehead Biomedical Institute. After completing his M.S. at MIT, Diamandis returned to Harvard to complete his M.D.

During his last year of medical school in 1989, Diamandis acted as managing director of the International Space University and CEO of International Micro Space, a microsatellite launch company.

Diamandis has founded over 25 companies in the areas of longevity, space, venture capital, and education.

In 1987, during his third year of medical school, Diamandis cofounded International Space University with Todd Hawley and Robert Richards. Diamandis served as the university's managing director and chief operating officer until 1989. Today, ISU offers a Space Studies program and two accredited Master of Space Studies degrees. Its $30 million campus is headquartered in Strasbourg, France.

Diamandis cofounded Microsat Launch Systems, later renamed International MicroSpace Inc., in 1989 during his fourth year of medical school and served as the company's CEO. IMI designed a small launcher called Orbital Express (later renamed "ORBEX") for taking 100-kg payloads to low-Earth orbit, collaborating with Bristol Aerospace for the manufacture. The company won a $100 million SDIO contract for one launch plus nine options and was sold to CTA Inc of Rockville, MD in 1993 for $250,000. Diamandis joined CTA for one year as VP of Commercial Space Programs post-acquisition. The ORBEX contract was eventually canceled "because of a glut of small launchers," and CTA put the project on hold and eventually canceled the project.

In 1991, Diamandis founded Constellation Communications, Inc., one of five low-Earth orbit satellite constellations for voice telephony. The company planned to deploy an equatorial ring of 10 satellites to provide communications primarily to Brazil and Indonesia. Diamandis remained director until 1993, when it was acquired by Angel Technology. Between 1995 and 1999, Diamandis was the president of Angel Technologies Corporation, a commercial communications company that intended to develop wireless broadband communications networks based on a high-altitude aircraft.

In 1994, Diamandis founded the XPRIZE Foundation after the failure of International MicroSpace, Inc and reading Charles Lindbergh's The Spirit of St. Louis. He serves as chairman and CEO of the foundation. XPRIZE was created to fund and operate a $10 million incentive competition intended to inspire a new generation of private passenger-carrying spaceships. The prize was announced on May 18, 1996, in St. Louis, without any purse money or teams. The prize was ultimately funded through an insurance policy underwritten by the Anousheh and Hamid Ansari Family and renamed the Ansari XPRIZE in their honor.

In 2012, with Steven Kotler, Diamandis coauthored Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. The nonfiction work argues that advances in technology, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy have the potential to significantly raise global standards of living. Abundance was No. 2 on The New York Times Best Seller list, remaining on the list for nine weeks. It was No. 1 on the nonfiction bestseller lists of Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

In 2015, again with Kotler, Diamandis coauthored Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth, and Impact the World, which provides analysis and instruction for entrepreneurs interested in learning about exponential technologies, moon-shot thinking, and crowdsourcing.

January 28, 2020, Kotler and Diamandis released a third book in the "Exponential Mindset Trilogy" series, which includes Abundance and Bold: The Future is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives, which examines the revolutionary changes brought about by convergence. The book argues that the already rapid pace of technological innovation is about to get even quicker.

In February 2022, Diamandis co-authored Life Force: How New Breakthroughs in Precision Medicine Can Transform the Quality of Your Life & Those You Love with Tony Robbins. The book, a New York Times bestseller, discusses various ways to boost energy, prevent disease, and extend vitality amidst health uncertainties.

In January 2025, Diamandis released Longevity Guidebook: How to Slow, Stop, and Reverse Aging—and NOT Die From Something Stupid.

Diamandis hosts the MOONSHOTS podcast, about technological advancements, which has featured people such as Elon Musk, Cathie Wood, Michael Saylor, Eric Schmidt.

He was CEO of Desktop.tv, a spin-off company from BlastOff! designed to provide a global peer-to-peer television network for broadcasting unique content to the desktop.

Diamandis was chairman of Starport.com, an Internet channel for space exploration for kids of all ages. The site represents over 20 astronauts and features space heroes, missions and simulations. It was sold to Space.com in June 2000.

Cofounded and served as director of the Space Generation Foundation, a nonprofit organization established in 1985 to create, in all people born since the advent of the Space Age on October 4, 1957, a sense of identity and awareness that they are born as members of a space-faring race. The foundation supports numerous educational and research projects.

Founded SpaceFair in 1983. SpaceFair is a national space conference that MIT hosted in 1983, 1985 and 1987.

Was a key subject in the 2007 documentary film, Orphans of Apollo.

Was a board member of Hyperloop and Cogswell Polytechnical College.

Created the Abundance360 (A360) Summit, a program for entrepreneurs, C-level executives, and government leaders. Its inaugural event was held in Los Angeles in 2013.

In February 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, MIT Technology Review reported that Diamandis held a "mostly maskless" event in Santa Monica in violation of the local stay-at-home order that became a superspreading event where 32 attendees became infected directly or indirectly. The event charged ultra-high-net-worth individuals up to $30,000 for tickets. In a follow-up article, Technology Review reported that after COVID-19 had spread among attendees, an "informational webinar" was delivered by Matt Cook, a trained anesthesiologist from the San Francisco Bay Area who had started a medical practice using alternative therapies. It is alleged that Cook tried to sell participants "fraudulent" treatments, including inhaled amniotic fluid and ketamine lozenges, which a professor of law and medicine at Stanford University called "quackery". The superspreading event was covered widely by publications including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Diamandis proposed to his girlfriend Kristen Hladecek on a Zero Gravity Corporation spaceflight in 2004. They have twin sons, born c. 2012.