On September 25, $5.5M+ gets handed out live on one stage in downtown LA, and Emerging LA subscribers are pre-approved to attend.

Two XPRIZE competitions get decided that day, and Peter Diamandis, who founded XPRIZE, hosts the whole thing.

BUILD WITH GEMINI XPRIZE

Five teams got 90 days to build a real AI business around a problem worth solving. They pitch live in the room for a $2M prize, and first place takes $500K.

Judging it are Palmer Luckey, Cathie Wood, Anousheh Ansari, Mark Pincus, and Logan Kilpatrick. Founders and investors who've built and funded at the scale these teams are aiming for.

FUTURE VISION XPRIZE

2,500 filmmakers submitted a three-minute vision of a future worth living in. Five of them premiere their trailers that afternoon, with $3.5M+ on the line. The winner gets a $2.5M grant to actually make the film, plus a production partnership with Range Media.

Judging it are Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neal Stephenson, Mira Lane, and Rod Roddenberry. Scientists, authors and media people, which is the right panel for a prize about stories.

There are ONLY 1,500 seats and every one of them gets reviewed by hand. Moonshots LIVE is normally application-only, which means most people have to ask to get in. You don't. Pick a tier and the seat is yours.

If you're investing in AI, building in it, or working anywhere near film and media in this city, this is the room for you.

When: Friday, September 25, running 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM PT. The AI teams pitch in the morning, the films premiere and are judged in the late afternoon, and the evening is for receptions and smaller rooms where you can meet with the finalists and judges.

Where: Downtown Los Angeles, at The United Theater, with the evening reception at The Belasco nearby.

They're also holding 100 seats at $499 for builders under 28 and students of any age.

Remember, you don't need to apply for any of this. Emerging LA subscribers are already pre-approved, so all you have to do is pick a tier.

Claim your seat here.

LA County's planning department has stopped approving new hyperscale data centers in unincorporated areas. The moratorium took effect on September 17 and covers every unincorporated zone in the county. It holds until a permanent ordinance gets written and goes before the Board of Supervisors.

Supervisor Hilda Solis is pushing for that permanent ban, and the full board is expected to take it up on October 6.

This has been building across the San Gabriel Valley all year. Monterey Park voters banned data centers outright back in June with 86% support, making it the first city in the country to do it. Irwindale and Commerce have both moved to halt unregulated development inside their own borders since.

If you're building anything that needs compute at scale, or you're looking at land in LA County, this is the kind of thing that decides where you end up.

Pulse Fund closed its first fund at $63M last week, and Tenzin Seldon is a solo GP out of LA.

She's spent two decades in climate tech, and she raised this one herself.

It backs early-stage companies across four areas: energy transition, infrastructure, food and agriculture, and mobility. The idea behind it is that those four move together rather than separately, so a battery breakthrough opens up electric mobility, and a jump in farming efficiency changes where infrastructure money goes.

The portfolio already includes Endera, Floodbase, and Twelve, and a 2024 NASA agreement gives their companies access to Earth-observation data.

If you're building in climate and raising early, this is a new local check you need to know about.

Do you want to reach 15K tech leaders in LA?