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Noah Hollmann was just months into his associate role at Boston Consulting Group when he decided to leave the top tier job and go to medical school. He enrolled at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin in 2019, where he started experimenting with how AI could improve medical research. The problem? Existing AI tools were no match for the complicated genetic data that he was studying.

To overcome the problem, he partnered with University of Freiburg professor Frank Hutter and Samuel Müller to develop a new form of an AI model: one that could ingest data that medical researchers had stored in complicated spreadsheets, instead of written documents that large language models worked best with.

Their experiment grew into AI startup Prior Labs, which offers open source models that have since been downloaded more than 4 million times by clients that want AI to read and understand their finances, make inventory predictions or avoid issues with their supply chain.

“It works with everything that has a table underlying it, and that's almost everything in the world,” Hollmann says. “If you have a database where you record whatever goes on in your business, [this] foundation model helps you make sense of the data.”

This month, the startup was officially acquired by SAP. The cofounders were reportedly paid more than half a billion dollars in cash upfront, and SAP has committed to pay more than $1.14 billion into Prior Labs over the next four years to help it scale.

This acquisition is just the second influx of money into the startup, which began as a research lab in 2024. In February 2025, they raised a $9.6 million pre-seed from Balderton Capital and XTX Ventures. Then they added experts like Yann LeCun (who developed neural networks) and Bernhard Schölkopf (a machine learning pioneer) to their board of advisors. From there, two critical changes made the billion-dollar acquisition possible, Hollmann says: recruitment and commercialization.

“We were able to attract the best talent in the world,” says Hollmann, whose recruits include researchers from Apple, Google and Goldman Sachs. “And we showed that we are able to execute.”

Early clients include Oxford Cancer Analytics, and Hitachi Rail––a Japanese railway giant that makes and monitors trains and rail signal systems, and used Prior’s TabPFN to predict railway defects.

Now Prior Labs is betting that SAPs 400,000-plus client roster will account for even more use cases at the enterprise level.

“One of the exciting bets that we are now working on is predicting why something happened, or what you can do to change a system,” Hollmann says. “Those are the holy grail of understanding data and something that’s completely unsolved at the moment."

See you next week,

Alex & Zoya

Next Billion Dollar Startups

For the 12th consecutive year, Forbes documented its list of predictions on who is set to become the next unicorn. It’s no shock that nearly every startup is using AI to scale. Also no shock that some Under 30 alum appeared on the list—like Nico Simko of digital bank Clair. See the full list here.

Lister Lowdown

-Moonshot AI, the Chinese startup behind the increasingly popular AI model Kimi, this week raised a $3.5 billion financing round from backers including Alibaba. Moonshot was founded by Yang Zhilin, who made the Under 30 Asia list in 2021 for cofounding an AI startup called Recurrent. Now Moonshot, whose large language models compete with Anthropic and OpenAI, is valued at some $35 billion following the raise.

-2015 Under 30 alum and ex-Sequioia partner Matt Huang’s venture firm, Paradigm, raised a $1.2 billion fund this month. Paradigm, which self describes as a “technology investment firm,” focuses heavily on areas like cryptocurrency, robotics and artificial intelligence. Since its founding in 2018, it’s made over 130 investments in startups including prediction market Kalshi and Stripe. This marks its fourth fund.

-Under 30 Hall of Famer Melanie Perkins, along with husband and Canva cofounder Cliff Obrecht, recently announced the launch of the Global Goals Platform, a Canva Foundation initiative that will survey people worldwide on the issues they most want addressed. The effort is part of the long-term plan to fulfill the couple’s pledge to donate 30% of their stake in the $42 billion company.

On Our Radar

-Forbes billionaire and U30 alum Palmer Luckey is reportedly seeking to raise a fresh round of funding for his defense startup Anduril, which could value the company at a startling $100 billion. Anduril had raised $5 billion at a $61 billion valuation earlier this year in a round backed by Thrive Capital and a16z. No decisions have been made yet. (Reuters)

-Shein, the Chinese e-commerce giant that does fast fashion almost like no other, is preparing for its splashy IPO (it’s seeking a $40 billion to $50 billion IPO valuation). While its listing in Hong Kong was recently approved, its U.S. business appears to be under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission. It’s unclear what exactly the FTC is investigating. (CNBC)

-And more billions: Elon Musk’s The Boring Company is in talks to raise nearly $4 billion at a $20 billion valuation. The Boring Company specializes in building underground tunnels for quicker transportation—more specifically for Teslas—that already exist in places like Las Vegas. If the talks go well, this would be the first time The Boring Company has raised money since 2022. It could also mean more tunnels in more cities. (WSJ)