proof of concept

noun

plural proofs of concept

: something that demonstrates the feasibility of a concept (such as a product idea or a business plan)

Even if it succeeds, the $5.9 billion reactor will be just a proof of concept, with commercial fusion power still decades away.

—Corey S. Powell

Malware and virus-writing used to be something hobbyist hackers did for fun, as proofs of concept. Not anymore.

—Mat Honan

—often hyphenated when used before another noun

No invention is worth anything without the proof-of-concept prototype.

—Shintaro Osano

… proof-of-concept experiments funded with public money and years away from any commercial application, were sponsored by university biology departments.

—Andrew Curry

Examples of proof of concept in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The company tackled the challenge of finding a suitable iridium replacement for PEM electrolysis as a proof of concept for its high-throughput materials discovery platform. —IEEE Spectrum, 30 Oct. 2023

Either way, as Riley sees it, UCLA’s overnight transformation on defense is proof of concept that USC can pull off something similar. —Ryan Kartje, Los Angeles Times, 17 Nov. 2023

The September storm provided early proof of concept for Rebuild’s work in Hoboken and for the effectiveness of its green infrastructure, although changing minds remains a hurdle in the current media landscape. —Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, 3 Nov. 2023

The evidence illustrates that this model works–with the success of countries such as Egypt, Uzbekistan, Brazil, India, and several others providing proof of concept. —Makhtar Diop, Fortune, 25 Oct. 2023

There are still complexities to iron out before this moves from proof of concept to standard lab practice. —WIRED, 3 Oct. 2023

As a proof of concept, the team fed some of Gero's recordings to a neural network, an algorithm that learns skills by analyzing data. —Lois Parshley, Scientific American, 19 Sep. 2023

In one proof of concept from earlier this year, security researcher Johann Rehberger was able to get ChatGPT to respond to a prompt embedded in a YouTube transcript. —Harry Guinness, Popular Science, 31 Aug. 2023

The feasibility study and proof of concept would be worth $1 million for the team with the winning submission. —Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 14 Aug. 2023

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Word History

First Known Use

1967, in the meaning defined above