From the lab to the basketball court, San Antonians have left their mark on Forbes\u2019 prestigious 30 Under 30 list. Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama and the Maverick X biotech duo of Eric Herrera and Jesse Evans were cited on the 2026 roll call of young adults shaping global culture.<\/p>\n
Victor Wembanyama\u2019s inclusion was perhaps no surprise. Almost everything Wemby does attracts headlines, from his taste in Halloween costumes<\/a> to a spiritual retreat<\/a> at a Shaolin temple in Zhengzhou, China. Forbes cites a long list of early career moves, from investing in Barcode sports drinks to creating a Spurs supporters section<\/a>.\u201c<\/p>\n Considered a generational prospect when he was taken with the first overall pick in the 2023 NBA draft, Victor Wembanyama claimed Rookie of the Year honors and finished as the runner-up in Defensive Player of the Year voting in 2024, and he earned an All-Star selection in his second season before he was sidelined by deep vein thrombosis in his shoulder,\u201d writes the Forbes team.<\/p>\n Although Herrera and Evans may not enjoy Wemby\u2019s international fame, their inclusion in the Energy and Green Tech category proves that San Antonio\u2019s talents go far beyond sports. Maverick X\u2019s proprietary solutions, LithX and PetroX, might change the way rare metals and minerals are recovered. (We won\u2019t comment on the disruptors\u2019 fondness for the letter \u201cX.\u201d)<\/p>\n \u201cOn an expedition to the North Pole, Herrera discovered a bacterium that produces enzymes capable of dissolving rock to expose embedded metals, without the need for harmful chemicals,\u201d writes Forbes. \u201cMaverick, cofounded by Herrera and Evans, has raised a $19 million seed round this year to apply the technique to copper, gold, and platinum.\u201d<\/p>\n Since 2011, Forbes has published the annual list to honor 30 notable people under 30 years old in 20 sectors, covering 600 individuals in fields as disparate as manufacturing and entertainment. Each list is judged by a select group of notables, including celebrities like Olivia Rodrigo and Black-ish star Yara Shahidi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the lab to the basketball court, San Antonians have left their mark on Forbes\u2019 prestigious 30 Under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1770,14026,910,37301,3080,82,84,83,154,509],"class_list":{"0":"post-91710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-biotech","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-honors","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-san-antonio","14":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","15":"tag-san-antonio-news","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-victor-wembanyama"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}