VC update

Report: Houston venture capital raised exceeds $1B over the past year

Houston's VC activity has hit a new milestone. Photo via Getty Images

Over the past 12 months, companies in Houston have raised over $1 billion in venture funding — for the first time, according to a new report from Houston Exponential.

"Crossing the billion-dollar mark is a watershed moment for Houston," says Harvin Moore, president of Houston Exponential, in the report. "Venture capital invested in Houston startups has tripled since 2016."

HX was founded in 2017 to focus on convening citywide efforts towards growing Houston's technology innovation ecosystem.

"The sustained level of progress we've seen in startup formation and growth over the past four years shows that Houston has what it takes to do what other leading cities have done: build a vibrant and healthy innovation economy," Moore continues.

Source: Pitchbook and Houston Exponential

Reaching this new benchmark is due to an active first quarter of 2021. VC funding from January through April 2021 totaled $748 million across 53 deals. This figure represents more VC funding than all of 2020.

Some of the year's largest VC deals so far include:

The industry breakdown has evolved as well, according to the report. Information technology represents the largest chunk of the $1.1 billion raised in Houston between April 2020 and April 2021, followed closely by health care.

Source: Pitchbook and Houston Exponential

There's still progress to be made, according to Moore, but these numbers represent significant growth of the ecosystem.

"We've come a long way in a short time, but it's still very early in the game," says Moore in the release. "Our rate of startup formation and growth is still much smaller than other cities, including some significantly smaller than Houston. But these results are making it more clear than ever that Houston is a great place to start and grow a business – and I think we will see these numbers continue to grow."

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The 250,000-square-foot building is the new home for four key research areas at Rice: advanced materials, quantum science and computing, urban research and innovation, and the energy transition. Photo courtesy of Rice

As the academic year officially kicks off, professors have started moving in and Rice University has opened its largest core campus research facility, The Ralph S. O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science.

The 250,000-square-foot building is the new home for four key research areas at Rice: advanced materials, quantum science and computing, urban research and innovation, and the energy transition. The university aims for the space to foster collaboration and innovation between the disciplines.

"To me it really speaks to where Rice wants to go as we grow our research endeavors on campus," Michael Wong, Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, whose lab is located in the new facility, said in a video from Rice. "It has to be a mix of engineering and science to do great things. We don’t want to do good things, we want to do great things. And this building will allow us to do that."

At $152 million, the state-of-the-art facility features five floors of labs, classrooms and seminar rooms. Common spaces and a cafe encourage communication between departments, and the top level is home to a reception suite and outdoor terrace with views of the Houston skyline.

It replaces 1940s-era Abercrombie Engineering Laboratory on campus, which was demolished in 2021 to make way for the new facilities. The iconic sculpture "Energy" by Rice alumnus William McVey that was part of the original building was preserved with plans to incorporate it into the new space.

The new building will be dedicated to its namesake Ralph O'Connor on Sept. 14 in Rice's engineering quad at 3 p.m. O'Connor, a Johns Hopkins University grad, became a fan Rice when he moved to Houston to work in the energy industry in the 1950s.

The former president and CEO of the Highland Oil Company and founder of Ralph S. O’Connor & Associates left the university $57 million from his estate after he died in 2018. The gift was the largest donation from an estate in Rice's history and brought his donations to the university, including those to many buildings on campus and endowments and scholarships, to a total of $85 million.

“How fitting that this building will be named after Ralph O’Connor,” Rice President Reginald DesRoches said in a statement last summer. “He was a man who always looked to the future, and the future is what this new engineering and science building is all about. Discoveries made within those walls could transform the world. Anybody who knew Ralph O’Connor knows he would have loved that.”

The dedication event will be open to the public. It will feature remarks from DesRoches, as well as Rice Provost Amy Dittmar, Dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences Thomas Killian, Chair of the Rice Board of Trustees Robert Ladd and Dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering Luay Nakhleh. A reception and tours of the new building will follow.

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