Announcing the Winners of the Twilio.org Climate Tech Prize

Announcing the Winners of the Twilio.org Climate Tech Prize

Announcing the Winners of the Twilio.org Climate Tech Prize

The climate crisis is a defining challenge of our time, and frontline communities feel its effects most acutely. At Twilio.org, we recognize the urgent need for scalable solutions to address these challenges. That’s why we launched the Climate Tech Prize—investing $1 million to support innovative, tech-driven solutions that enhance climate resilience and address the immediate and long-term challenges of climate-induced migration and displacement.

This Twilio.org Climate Tech Prize showcased innovative solutions from both nonprofit and for-profit organizations—highlighting our belief that tackling the climate crisis requires collaboration across sectors. From scaling technologies that strengthen community resilience to leveraging tech to mitigate the effects of climate change, this prize was designed to empower bold, actionable solutions.

We received over 500 applications from organizations worldwide, all working to create a climate-resilient future. Today, we are thrilled to announce our five winners: ClimaSens, One Acre Fund, Gravity Water, NAXA, and Blue Marble. These organizations span diverse geographies, including Australia, Nepal, Africa, and Latin America, and represent an inspiring mix of nonprofits, for-profit businesses, and social enterprises. Together, they demonstrate the power of innovation and collaboration in building climate-resilient communities.

Solutions with Global Reach

Each of our winners exemplifies the transformative potential of technology in driving climate resilience:

• Gravity Water, a nonprofit, delivers safe water to at-risk communities worldwide by converting rainwater into potable water with innovative, eco-friendly technologies.
• ClimaSens is a business revolutionizing disaster preparedness by providing machine-learning-powered risk analysis for heatwaves, floods, and fires in Australia.
• One Acre Fund, a nonprofit social enterprise dedicated to empowering smallholder farmers across Africa, provides digital tools, climate-smart practices, and affordable financing to boost productivity and resilience.
• NAXA, is a technology consulting company specializing in designing and developing digital and spatial technologies that empower climate resilience and drive sustainable development.
• Blue Marble brings insurance protection to underserved communities worldwide. This support ensures they receive timely assistance in the face of climate risks.

These solutions embody the critical need for private-sector and nonprofit innovation to converge in addressing the pressing challenges of climate resiliency.

Meet the Winners

Five organizations tackling climate adaptation and resilience

Image Source: Gravity Water

Gravity Water: Safe Water Through Automated Rain Harvesting

As rising temperatures drive more frequent droughts and water uncertainty, Gravity Water offers a sustainable solution to the growing challenge of water accessibility. By modernizing the ancient practice of rainwater harvesting with automation technologies, Gravity Water enables hundreds of schools in rural Asia to operate entirely on collected and treated rainwater. Despite its potential, rainwater harvesting is often overlooked by decision-makers due to a lack of compelling data on its benefits as a water access solution.

With prize funding, Gravity Water plans to expand its reach and enhance its data collection capabilities, aiming to build the largest global dataset on integrated rainwater harvesting by 2026, demonstrating its effectiveness as a scalable, climate-resilient approach to providing clean water.

ClimaSens: Preparing Communities for Climate Disasters

ClimaSens leverages machine learning to provide critical risk analysis for heatwaves, floods, and fires, helping governments and communities prepare for climate-related disasters. As a climate risk and hazard data supplier for the Australian federal government and a long-term collaborator with Australian Red Cross, ClimaSens supports efforts to monitor climate impacts and improve resilience planning for communities and individuals experiencing vulnerability across Australia.

With this funding, ClimaSens aims to enhance its forecasting and projection capabilities, expanding its reach across Australia and across the world to help communities build long-term climate resilience.

One Acre Fund: Empowering African Farmers

One Acre Fund is empowering smallholder farmers across Africa to adapt to climate change through its Digital Weather Advisory Services (DWAS), which leverage satellite data to provide real-time, actionable agricultural insights. Serving 5.1 million farmers across nine countries last year—with full-service clients achieving an average 40% profit increase—One Acre Fund is now scaling DWAS to reach 900,000 farmers in Kenya with support from the Climate Tech Prize. DWAS helps farmers make climate-smart decisions, such as selecting resilient seed varieties, optimizing fertilizer use, and improving soil health, to boost yields and income.

By building resilience against drought, extreme heat, and erratic weather, One Acre Fund is ensuring farmers can sustain their livelihoods, increase food security, and contribute to long-term agricultural sustainability.

NAXA: Anticipating and Addressing Disaster Risks

NAXA is leveraging digital and spatial technologies to address the growing threat of floods and extreme rainfall patterns driven by climate change. NAXA uses its Digital and Spatial Technologies for Anticipatory Action (DASTAA) platform, a one-stop digital platform that enables data-driven disaster preparedness through household and community-level risk assessment, and early actions planning like risk communication messaging, relief distribution and humanitarian cash transfer management ensuring strengthened anticipatory actions to reduce impacts of extreme climate events such as heavy rainfall, heatwaves etc.

With support from the Twilio Climate Tech Prize, Naxa will upgrade its digital and spatial technology platform (DASTAA) platform to enhance its features and usability, design and implement youth-led data collection initiatives, and scale its operations to flood prone areas in Nepal and Democratic Republic of Congo.

Image Source: Blue Marble, Indonesia

Blue Marble: Financial Safety Nets for Underserved Communities

Blue Marble delivers parametric insurance solutions to underserved communities, providing swift payouts based on predefined climate triggers.

With support from the Twilio Climate Tech Prize, Blue Marble will extend its offerings to smallholder farmers in Aceh, one of Indonesia’s largest coffee and cocoa-producing regions. This initiative will demonstrate how crop insurance can be scaled nationwide, empowering coffee and cocoa farmers to better recover from the impacts of climate change. Blue Marble is also using prize funding to improve their technology, making it easier for farmers to sign up and receive payouts. By offering equitable and sustainable access to climate risk insurance, Blue Marble strengthens the resilience of smallholder farmers, safeguarding their livelihoods from climate-related losses and enhancing the stability of agricultural communities.

A Shared Commitment to Climate Resiliency

Twilio’s platform helps organizations address climate change on a large scale. For example, it powers SMS alerts for early warnings, offers APIs to help farmers use resources efficiently, and provides contact center solutions that connect people affected by climate disasters with essential services. By partnering with impact organizations, we’re building technology solutions that strengthen communities and create lasting impact.

The Twilio.org Climate Tech Prize underscores our commitment to accelerating solutions that create meaningful change, showcasing the powerful potential of both nonprofit and for-profit solutions to build a climate-resilient world. By funding and supporting these five innovative organizations, we’re enabling equitable access to the tools and technologies frontline communities need to thrive.

Together, we can create a future where communities not only survive but flourish—paving the way for a truly climate-resilient world.

Claire FitzGerald is the Environmental Sustainability and ESG Director at Twilio.org. She believes that sustainability and climate action can be accelerated through innovation, and the Twilio.org Impact Fund provides grants and investments to empower our partners' climate resilience efforts. When she’s not thinking about climate action, she's exploring new hiking trails with her family. She can be reached at cfitzgerald@twilio.com .