Nvidia has joined the global environmental prize, The Earthshot Prize, as a new founding partner.

According to Nvidia, it has committed to providing Earthshot Finalists with free resources, technical support, and computing power to help them predict climate risk earlier, monitor nature, accelerate discoveries, and optimize complex systems at scale.

As part of the partnership, Nvidia will also support Earthshot finalists in modeling, testing, and deploying solutions across climate, nature, clean air, oceans, and waste through its Inception startup program, which provides educational resources, engineering support, and access to Nvidia’s DGX Spark systems.

“Earthshot finalists around the world are using AI and technology to scale their solutions for people and the planet. We are thrilled that Nvidia is joining forces with the leaders on the front line of these efforts - this is a transformational opportunity for our community,” said Jason Knauf, CEO of The Earthshot Prize.

The Earthshot Prize was founded by Prince William in 2020 and is designed to support and scale solutions to repair and regenerate the planet. The initiative offers five separate prizes, including Protect and Restore Nature, Clean Our Air, Revive Our Oceans, Build a Waste-Free World, and Fix Our Climate.

The prize selects 15 finalists each year, with five winners from each cohort who receive £1 million ($1.3m) to support scaling. Since its inception, the prize has supported 90 finalists. Notable finalists include Form Energy, a long-duration energy storage firm, ATRenew, an AI-automated electronics recycling program, and Satellites on Fire, an AI-powered wildlife detection platform.

Commenting on the news, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, said: “Super Intelligence can bring solutions to humanity’s greatest challenges within reach - and help create a future where humanity and our planet thrive together. Through our partnership with The Earthshot Prize, we will put accelerated computing and SI in the hands of extraordinary scientists and innovators to discover new sources of sustainable energy, invent materials that require fewer resources, and turn scientific breakthroughs into the technologies and industries that make sustainable prosperity humanity’s future.”

Unlike other hyperscale firms that have signed large-scale carbon removal deals, Nvidia has instead focused on grid infrastructure investments, renewable energy deployments, and support for climate-innovation tools. This has led some critics, such as Greenpeace, to contend that the company is not doing enough to mitigate its climate impact. Activist investors have also pushed shareholder resolutions demanding that Nvidia fully report the downstream use-phase emissions generated when customers power its GPUs.