Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative Doubles $1M Prize Competition for Agentic AI Solutions to Accelerate Alzheimer's Research

Two teams – Biomni-AD (Stanford University and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) and Prima Mente – win the Alzheimer's Insights AI Prize; each will receive $1M to help researchers move from data to insights faster  

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, March 23, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative (AD Data Initiative) today announced Biomni-AD and Prima Mente as the winners of the $1M Alzheimer's Insights AI Prize, a global competition designed to advance breakthrough artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for Alzheimer's and related dementias (ADRD) research. Originally designed to award a single $1M prize, the competition expanded to name two winners—awarding $1M to each team and doubling the total prize amount to $2M—reflecting both the exceptional quality of submissions and the pressing need for innovative approaches in the field.

Alzheimer's disease is projected to affect an estimated 152 million people by 2050, and the scale of the growing burden underscores the urgency of overcoming major research hurdles. The biology of neurodegenerative diseases is extraordinarily complex, involving multiple pathways and likely differing causes across patients. While large volumes of clinical, genomic, imaging, and real–world data now exist, much of it remains fragmented or too large for traditional research approaches to synthesize effectively. Agentic AI—systems capable of independent planning, reasoning, and acting—offers a promising pathway for dramatically accelerating progress.

"When we launched the Alzheimer's Insights AI Prize, we made a big bet on the ability of agentic AI to advance Alzheimer's research—but the advances we've seen since then have far exceeded our expectations," said Dr. Niranjan Bose, Interim Executive Director of the AD Data Initiative and Managing Director for Health & Life Sciences at Gates Ventures. "Selecting two grand prize winners wasn't the outcome we planned, but it reflects what we saw throughout this competition: more innovation, more momentum, and more need for this work than ever before."

Launched in August 2025, the Alzheimer's Insights AI Prize—which is backed by Bill Gates and a coalition of leading advocacy, government, industry, and philanthropic partners—drew more than 180 submissions on using agentic AI to accelerate discoveries in Alzheimer's and dementia research. A panel of Alzheimer's and AI experts scored each submission and selected 10 semifinalists, who pitched on the sidelines of the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease (CTAD) conference in December 2025.

Biomni-AD and Prima Mente were among five finalist teams that were then invited to present to a judging panel on March 17, 2026, during the Alzheimer's Insights Summit 3 at the 20th International Conference on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases (AD/PD) in Copenhagen. The five finalist teams were:

• Aletheia (University of Notre Dame, Indiana University School of Medicine)
• Biomni-AD (Stanford University, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) 
• corteX (University of Pennsylvania) 
• Fingerprint (MIT, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard) 
• Prima Mente (Prima Mente)

Summaries of the winning ideas: 

• Biomni-AD's winning solution is an AI-powered "co-scientist" built for Alzheimer's research. It uses agentic AI to perform normally time-consuming research tasks in minutes with a higher level of accuracy than general AI models, enabling researchers to move from data to insight faster.    
• Prima Mente's winning solution, PARTHENON, is an integrated modelling and discovery platform that acts as a virtual "wet lab" – enabling researchers to model experiments using virtual cells and the support of an AI co-scientist "Athena," compressing work that normally takes weeks into minutes. The platform aims to build a global lab for Alzheimer's research by democratizing both model training and hypothesis generation. 

The winning teams' tools will be made available to all researchers worldwide for free through the AD Data Initiative's flagship data sharing and analytics platform for Alzheimer's research, AD Workbench.

Gregory Moore, Senior Advisor at Gates Ventures and the AD Data Initiative, and head of the judging panel said, "Our judges evaluated each finalist on scientific rigor, technical originality, and the likelihood that the work could materially accelerate Alzheimer's research and discovery, with real potential to help enable better treatments and, ultimately, a cure.

"Every finalist presented a serious, credible, and highly compelling vision for how AI could help move the field forward. This was an exceptionally difficult decision, and in the end the judges determined that both teams merited first-place honors. Biomni-AD stood out for building a true AI co-scientist for Alzheimer's disease—one grounded in expert-curated multimodal data spanning omics, single-cell biology, biomarkers, and clinical domains, and capable of autonomously planning and executing reproducible scientific workflows. Prima Mente stood out for its deeply foundational approach: a multi-agent reasoning platform built on virtual neurons, microglia, and astrocytes that enables researchers to test therapeutic hypotheses in silico and explore disease mechanisms in a far more dynamic and biologically grounded way."

All 10 semifinalist teams that presented at the December 2025 CTAD conference have been invited to join AI Collaboratories—collaborative hubs uniting AI innovators with leading Alzheimer's researchers—to help ensure these innovations continue to grow, are validated, and reach the researchers and patients who need them most. The goal is to translate the promise demonstrated throughout this competition into lasting impact by bringing together science, technology, and community to change the story of Alzheimer's disease. Some of these tools will be showcased at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in London this year. 

About the Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative 

The Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative (AD Data Initiative) is a coalition of leading advocacy, government, industry, and philanthropy organizations working together to accelerate progress towards new diagnostics, treatments, and cures for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Learn more at www.alzheimersdata.org. 

For more information: 

Alzheimer's Insights AI Prize: https://www.alzheimersdata.org/accelerating-research/ai-explorations 

Nature Medicine correspondence proposing four priority areas where AI could transform Alzheimer's research: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03632-8 

Media Contact:
Mary Robbins
301-996-9332
[email protected] 

SOURCE Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative