Houston AI startup raises $1.5M seed round of funding

money moves

Industrial Data Labs announced the close of its $1.5 million seed round of funding. Photo via Getty Images

A Houston startup that's on a mission to transform and expedite data processing for its industrial clients has raised seed funding.

Industrial Data Labs announced this week that it's closed a $1.5 million seed round of funding. The company has created an applied artificial intelligence technology for the pipe, valve, fitting, and flange, or PVF, industry's inside sales team. The terms of the seed round were not disclosed.

"Our groundbreaking AI-Powered Inside Sales Copilot is transforming the way inside sales teams operate in the PVF industry," Marty Dytrych, co-founder and CEO of Industrial Data Labs, says in a news release. "By embedding our solution into existing BOM and MRO workflows, we empower teams to achieve unmatched efficiency, accuracy, and sales performance.”

Dytrych founded the company with COO Aaron deOliveira and CTO Tige Richardson in 2020. Per the release, Industrial Data Labs will use the funding to continue growing to continue delivering its "solutions that enhance efficiency and create new opportunities" within the PVF industry.

The company did not disclose its seed investors, but reported that Marshal Kushniruk is among the investors and is a member of the company's board of directors.

"Industrial Data Labs' innovative application of AI technology has the potential to bring significant transformation to the industrial sales landscape," Kushniruk says in the release. We are thrilled to support their mission and drive impactful change within the PVF industry.”

Mark Janzen is an early investor in Industrial Data Labs.

"Industrial Data Labs is at the forefront of Applied AI solutions in the industrial sector," he adds. "We believe their commitment to delivering unparalleled value to clients through their Inside Sales Copilot will have a lasting impact on the industry.”

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Rice, Houston Methodist developing soft 'sleep cap' for brain health research

Researchers and scientists at Rice University and Houston Methodist are developing a “sleep cap” that aims to protect the brain against dementia and other similar diseases by measuring and improving deep sleep.

The project is a collaboration between Rice University engineering professors Daniel Preston, Vanessa Sanchez and Behnaam Aazhang; and Houston Methodist neurologist Dr. Timea Hodics and Dr. Gavin Britz, director of the Houston Methodist Neurological Institute and chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery.

According to Rice, deep sleep is essential for clearing waste products from the brain and nightly “cleaning cycles” help remove toxic proteins. These toxic proteins, like amyloids, can accumulate during the day and are linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological issues.

Aazhang, director of the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative, and his team are building a system that not only tracks the brain’s clearing process but can also stimulate it, improving natural mechanisms that protect against neurodegeneration.

Earlier proof-of-concept versions of the caps successfully demonstrated the promise of this approach; however, they were rigid and uncomfortable for sleep.

Preston and Sanchez will work to transform the design of the cap into a soft, lightweight, textile-based version to make sleep easier, while also allowing the caps to be customizable and tailored for each patient.

“One of the areas of expertise we have here at Rice is designing wearable devices from soft and flexible materials,” Preston, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, said in a news release. “We’ve already shown this concept works in rigid device prototypes. Now we’re building a soft, breathable cap that people can comfortably wear while they sleep.”

Additionally, the research team is pursuing ways to adapt their technology to measure neuroinflammation and stimulate the brain’s natural plasticity. Neuroinflammation, or swelling in the brain, can be caused by injury, stroke, disease or lifestyle factors and is increasingly recognized as a driver of neurodegeneration, according to Rice.

“Our brain has an incredible ability to rewire itself,” Aazhang added in the release. “If we can harness that through technology, we can open new doors for treating not just dementia but also traumatic brain injury, stroke, Parkinson’s disease and more.”

The project represents Rice’s broader commitment to brain health research and its support for the Dementia Prevention Research Institute of Texas (DPRIT), which passed voter approval last week. The university also recently launched its Rice Brain Institute.

As part of the project, Houston Methodist will provide access to clinicians and patients for early trials, which include studies on patients who have suffered traumatic brain injury and stroke.

“We have entered an era in neuroscience that will result in transformational cures in diseases of the brain and spinal cord,” Britz said in the release. “DPRIT could make Texas the hub of these discoveries.”

Autonomous truck company with Houston routes goes public

on a roll

Kodiak Robotics, a provider of AI-powered autonomous vehicle technology, has gone public through a SPAC merger and has rebranded as Kodiak AI. The company operates trucking routes to and from Houston, which has served as a launchpad for the business.

Privately held Kodiak, founded in 2018, merged with a special purpose acquisition company — publicly held Ares Acquisition Corp. II — to form Kodiak AI, whose stock now trades on the Nasdaq market.

In September, Mountain View, California-based Kodiak and New York City-based Ares disclosed a $145 million PIPE (private investment in public equity) investment from institutional investors to support the business combo. Since announcing the SPAC deal, more than $220 million has been raised for the new Kodiak.

“We believe these additional investments underscore our investors’ confidence in the value proposition of Kodiak’s safe and commercially deployed autonomous technology,” Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak, said in a news release.

“We look forward to leading the advancement of the commercial trucking and public sector industries,” he added, “and delivering on the exciting value creation opportunities ahead to the benefit of customers and shareholders.”

Last December, Kodiak debuted a facility near George Bush Intercontinental/Houston Airport for loading and loading driverless trucks. Transportation and logistics company Ryder operates the “truckport” for Ryder.

The facility serves freight routes to and from Houston, Dallas and Oklahoma City. Kodiak’s trucks currently operate with or without drivers. Kodiak’s inaugural route launched in 2024 between Houston and Dallas.

One of the companies using Kodiak’s technology is Austin-based Atlas Energy Solutions, which owns and operates four driverless trucks equipped with Kodiak’s driver-as-a-service technology. The trucks pick up fracking sand from Atlas’ Dune Express, a 42-mile conveyor system that carries sand from Atlas’ mine to sites near customers’ oil wells in the Permian Basin.

Altogether, Atlas has ordered 100 trucks that will run on Kodiak’s autonomous technology in an effort to automate Atlas’ supply chain.

Rice University scientists invent new algorithm to fight Alzheimer's

A Seismic Breakthrough

A new breakthrough from researchers at Rice University could unlock the genetic components that determine several human diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Alzheimer's disease affected 57 million people worldwide in 2021, and cases in the United States are expected to double in the next couple of decades. Despite its prevalence and widespread attention of the condition, the full mechanisms are still poorly understood. One hurdle has been identifying which brain cells are linked to the disease.

For years, it was thought that the cells most linked with Alzheimer's pathology via DNA evidence were microglia, infection-fighting cells in the brain. However, this did not match with actual studies of Alzheimer's patients' brains. It's the memory-making cells in the human brain that are implicated in the pathology.

To prove this link, researchers at Rice, alongside Boston University, developed a computational algorithm called “Single-cell Expression Integration System for Mapping Genetically Implicated Cell Types," or SEISMIC. It allows researchers to zero in on specific neurons linked to Alzheimer's, the first of its kind. Qiliang Lai, a Rice doctoral student and the lead author of a paper on the discovery published in Nature Communications, believes that this is an important step in the fight against Alzheimer's.

“As we age, some brain cells naturally slow down, but in dementia — a memory-loss disease — specific brain cells actually die and can’t be replaced,” said Lai. “The fact that it is memory-making brain cells dying and not infection-fighting brain cells raises this confusing puzzle where DNA evidence and brain evidence don’t match up.”

Studying Alzheimer's has been hampered by the limitations of computational analysis. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) map small differences in the DNA of Alzheimer's patients. The genetic signal in these studies would often over-emphasize the presence of infection fighting cells, essentially making the activity of those cells too "loud" statistically to identify other factors. Combined with greater specificity in brain regional activity, SEISMIC reduces the data chatter to grant a clearer picture of the genetic component of Alzheimer's.

“We built our SEISMIC algorithm to analyze genetic information and match it precisely to specific types of brain cells,” Lai said. “This enables us to create a more detailed picture of which cell types are affected by which genetic programs.”

Though the algorithm is not in and of itself likely to lead to a cure or treatment for Alzheimer's any time soon, the researchers say that SEISMIC is already performing significantly better than existing tools at identifying important disease-relevant cellular signals more clearly.

“We think this work could help reconcile some contradicting patterns in the data pertaining to Alzheimer’s research,” said Vicky Yao, assistant professor of computer science and a member of the Ken Kennedy Institute at Rice. “Beyond that, the method will likely be broadly valuable to help us better understand which cell types are relevant in different complex diseases.”

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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