On October 4, 2024, ten startup company finalists, chosen from thousands of startups around the world, pitched in front of a panel of Silicon Valley venture capital investor judges for a $1 Million prize. After careful deliberation, the judges awarded the prize to EarthGrid PBC, a public benefit corporation based in San Francisco that has developed a patented plasma tunnel-boring technology to enable the U.S. and other countries to fix their electricity transmission grids.