Without any fanfare or publicity, San Antonio’s MX Challenge closed in July without awarding its $500,000 prize.
Jesus Salas, the program manager, posted a message to the site: “Hey innovator,
Thanks for the interest that you showed for the MxChallenge. After evaluating the low demand on the competing participants we decided to shut down the MxChallenge. However, we are still welcoming Mexican tech-companies that are interested in expanding their operations at Geekdom. So, for more information about opening a tech-office at San Antonio, please contact info@geekdom.com.”
The competition officially launched in January of 2014. Salas was based at Geekdom.
In May of 2014, Salas said 30 teams had signed up for the challenge during a presentation at Geekdom.
The prize was worth $500,000 for the individual, team or organization that created a model to assist ten Mexican startup tech companies to open offices at Geekdom in San Antonio. The prize was supposed to go to the team with the best business plan, the most revenue generated and the most jobs created.
The MX Challenge was the first community-based project from HeroX, a platform for competitions to solve local and global problems. The founder of XPrize, Dr. Peter Diamandis co-founded HeroX in 2013.