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A new Under 30 unicorn has been born.

Radar, a retail technology startup founded by Under 30 lister Spencer Hewett, announced a $170 million Series B fundraising round this month led by Gideon Ventures and Nimble Partners. The round valued Radar at $1 billion—adding the startup to the growing list of Under 30s who have passed the eight-figure-valuation threshold (including those like Eight Sleep, Prior Labs and others who also became unicorns just this year).

Radar’s funding comes at a time of record growth in AI. But while much of that funding is flooding toward LLMs and other digital tools, Hewett believes in-person retail is the next big opportunity for the AI craze.

With Radar, brick-and-mortar retailers can gain access to ecommerce-levels of customer data. It provides a ceiling-installed sensor system that tracks the location of store items with 99% accuracy, up from the sub-70% of inventory that most retailers can account for at a given moment. That additional knowledge on where products are has resulted in 10% or more in in-store revenue growth for Radar customers, Hewett says.

New AI offerings have also contributed to the bump in funding and valuation: Launched in February, their Fitting Room Intelligence tool can detect what items are taken into the fitting room, what gets exchanged for different sizes, and what sells. And Floor Set IQ uses all the data being measured to design a recommended floor plan.

“Physical retailers want to be able to measure their stores like they measure their websites,” Hewett says. “They want to drive those same optimizations that have been available to e-commerce for decades in the physical space as well.”

Read more about how this startup is changing retail here.

More news next week,

Alex & Zoya

New Billionaire David Beckham On His Family, Team And Legacy

How the British super star built a $1 billion empire, mainly in the U.S., after retiring from soccer. Read more here.

Calling All Under 30 Veterans

If you have previously been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and have served (or are serving) in the armed forces, we want to hear from you. Reach out to ayork@forbes.com with the subject line: “Under 30 Veteran” and let me know what list you made, what branch you served in, and what you’re up to now.

Lister Lowdown

-This month, 4AM Skin, founded by Under 30 listers Jade Beguelin and Sabrina Sadeghian, announced a $4 million seed round led by CAVU Consumer Partners. Beguelin, a former Wall Street trader, and Sadeghian, who officially received her doctorate of medicine from Georgetown University last week, launched the startup in 2021. After being part of a Sephora brand accelerator last year, they officially entered the retail space this month, too, with their launch into Target—now seen in 1,745 Target locations across the country.

- Fintech platform Hypercard was sold to American Express last month. Cofounders Marc Baghadjian and Nikolas Ioannou launched the company in 2022. Their cards—which corporate employees would get in their own name (they’d also pay the bill and get the rewards points)—were already part of the American Express network. Now, the company will be fully integrated into the finance giant.

-Prior Labs is rumored to be acquired by SAP. The German startup was cofounded by 2026 Under 30 Europe lister Noah Hollman just 18 months ago, and while the exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, sources say it was an “almost all cash” deal, with “well over half a billion dollars in cash up front for the startup’s [three] founders.” Plus, pending regulatory approval of the entire process, SAP says they plan to invest $1.16 billion into the business over the next four years to grow it into an AI lab focused on “structured data”—a.k.a. data found in spreadsheets, tables and databases.

One Minute With Colin Rocker

We’re bringing you the scoop on a new Under 30 community member. Up this week: 2026 Education lister Colin Rocker. He’s a content creator with approximately 500,000 followers who tune in for his career and personal finance advice. He’s also the founder of For the First, a community platform that hosts meetups for conversations on navigating work.

The following has been slightly edited for length and clarity.

You have a multi-pronged career: running For The Firsts, creating content and helping people manage their own careers. How do you define what you do today? It's hard! But I would define my role as a creator-led founder. I create content that helps people understand the ways the world of work is shifting, especially if they are the first in their family to do what they do for work. And that media business has allowed me to start a community, For The Firsts.

You started creating content when you worked a traditional 9-5. What inspired your first post and what about those early posting days do you think drew an audience? I was burnt out completely in 2021, and needed an outlet to make something that didn't have to go into a deck. My first post had nothing to do with career advice, but when I started sharing my day-to-day, people would ask me "wait, what's consulting?" and so I started to talk about it more and more.

How has your approach to content changed since then? I like to tell stories about how my own work has changed, and what that means for my audience. My content strategy is to "educate by accident" and to use the news and headlines around work as context, but not content.

Now a full-time entrepreneur, what does your division of labor look like when it comes to these multiple facets of your career? I try to split my days between creative output (scripts, newsletters, videos) and the business activities (hiring, pitching, product development, event planning, brand partnerships, speaking, etc.).

I currently work with a management agency and I have a Head of Ops that helps to create the space I need to make the content that drives the business forward.

What does a day in the life look like? Most mornings I'm up by 5:30 a.m. and I go on a run or to the gym. Once my nanny arrives around 9 a.m., I'll usually walk or bike to my office (a studio apartment in midtown). I get to my office around 9:30 a.m. and I like to spend each morning writing, filming and editing before getting into my emails, slacks, and calls after lunch. And then most evenings I'm either attending a dinner, mixer, premiere, or other event, so I get home around 9 or 10 p.m.

Any non-negotiables to start your morning? My best days start with a workout, but I'm also getting better about spending no-phone time with my son in the morning.

How about to wind down after a long day? TV for sure. My wife and I have been loving The Pitt, and I'm a huge superhero nerd so I'll watch any new show related to that as well.

What’s your caffeine of choice? Black coffee! I get a new bag shipped to me each month and I've recently been loving BIGFACE.

What’s your favorite hobby outside of work? I like going on long runs through Central Park, and I honestly love my work. So I like to spend my free time getting inspiration for future videos, responding to comments and building AI tools to help me run my business more smoothly.

What’s your favorite brand partnership you’ve worked on? I had the opportunity to work with Apple to tell my story as a first-gen college student. It was such a high-quality video, and it was the most honest and open I'd been in a piece of sponsored content about my story which the brand loved.

Being able to build a life and a business telling my story is still so wild to me. And it's a privilege I'll never take for granted.

Best advice for how creators can start to make money? Make better content, consistently. And have a unique point of view. I don't "give career advice" I "tell stories and share strategies that let other first-gen professionals know that they're not alone." That's much more compelling for a brand or potential partner.

What’s a hot take you have about your industry (or life in general)? You have to build in non-productive time. A walk around my neighborhood or time spent scribbling in a journal has produced some of my best ideas. But if you don't quiet the noise of social media and your email, you'll never be able to hear that.

What’s one prediction you have about the future of content creation? AI-generated content will only drive up the demand for quality human-generated content.

What’s one piece of non-generic advice you’d give other young people in their careers (9-5 or otherwise)? Go to the office. Or find a way to increase your visibility with leadership. In this new world of work, your skillset is important but you are invisible if you aren't finding a way to get more facetime with the decision makers in your company or industry.

What’s the worst career advice you’ve received or heard? "Your work will speak for you." A PowerPoint will never speak up for you in a meeting with the person that controls your salary. But a mentor or advocate will. And arming them with the impactful work you've done, or increasing your visibility so they know your name beforehand, is a much better strategy.

What’s something about you that the Under 30 community might not know? My close friends and I in middle school had a breakdancing crew called the Kids Next Door. We performed at a few talent shows (and won one!) but sadly did not have the skills to take that venture full-time.