Houston coworking company acquires digital community platform

M&A moves

With seven locations across the Houston area, The Cannon's digital technology allows its members a streamlined connection. Photo courtesy of The Cannon

After collaborating over the years, The Cannon has acquired a Houston startup's digital platform technology to become a "physical-digital hybrid" community.

Village Insights, a Houston startup, worked with The Cannon to create and launch its digital community platform Cannon Connect. Now, The Cannon has officially acquired the business. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“The combined commitment to support innovation communities—large and small—is evident,” Andrew Ramirez, who served as CEO for Village Insights ahead of the acquisition, says in a news release. “Village Insights and The Cannon merged to align efforts and cultivate local, regional and global innovation communities. Combining our value propositions represents a significant leap forward for the populations that we serve.”

With seven locations across the Houston area, The Cannon's digital technology allows its members a streamlined connection.

“The Cannon’s hub network stretches from The Woodlands to Galveston and across the 13-county region, with a membership base of more than 900 companies and 3,000 employees,” Jon Lambert, CEO of The Cannon, adds. “The digital extension of our physical footprint brings comprehensive innovation and business development support to communities that need it the most. Cannon Connect’s virtual- connection capabilities stand to remarkably expand our universe of ecosystem opportunities.”

Village Insights was founded in 2020. According to the release, the acquisition began in December, and members of the Village Insights core leadership team have rolled onto new roles at The Cannon.

“The integration of a world-class onsite member experience and Cannon Connect’s superior virtual resource network creates a seamless, streamlined environment for member organizations,” Clemmie Martin, The Cannon’s newly appointed chief of staff, says in the release. “Cannon Connect and this acquisition have paved new pathways to access and success for all.”

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This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes James Hury of TRISH, Serafina Lalany of HX, and Andrew Ramirez of Village Insights. Courtesy photos

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — from space health to virtual collaboration — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

James Hury, deputy director and chief innovation officer of TRISH

James Hury joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss the role of the Translational Research Institute for Space Health. Photo courtesy of TRISH

Only about 500 humans have made it to space, and that number is getting bigger thanks to commercial space travel.

"If you look at all the people who have gone into space, they've mostly been employees of nations — astronauts from different governments," says James Hury of the Translational Research Institute for Space Health on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "We're going to start to get people from all different ages and backgrounds."

Hury is the deputy director and chief innovation officer for Houston-based TRISH, and he's focused on identifying space tech and research ahead of the market that has the potential to impact human health in space. From devices that allow astronauts to perform remote health care on themselves to addressing behavioral health challenges, TRISH is supporting the future of space health. Click here to read more and stream the podcast.

Serafina Lalany, executive director of Houston Exponential

Serafina Lalany, vice president of operations at Houston Exponential

HX has its new permanent leader. Photo courtesy of Serafina Lalany

Houston's nonprofit focused on accelerating the growth of the local innovation ecosystem has named its new leader.

Serafina Lalany has been named Houston Exponential's executive director. She has been serving in the position as interim since July when Harvin Moore stepped down. Prior to that, she served as vice president of operations and chief of staff at HX.

"I'm proud to be leading an organization that is focused on elevating Houston's startup strengths on a global scale while helping to make the world of entrepreneurship more accessible, less opaque, and easier to navigate for founders," Lalany says in a news release. "My team and I will be building upon the great deal of momentum that has already been established in this effort, and I look forward to collaborating closely with members of our community and convening board in this next chapter of HX." Click here to read more.

Andrew Ramirez, CEO of Village Insights

Andrew Ramirez originally worked on a similar project 10 years ago. Photo via LinkedIn

Innovation thrives on collisions, but how do innovators connect without face-to-face connection? Andrew Ramirez and Mike Francis set out to design a virtual village to promote collisions and innovation, and their platform is arriving at an apt time.

"The world has changed," Ramirez says. "I feel like people are trying to find the right balance of the physical but also the productivity gain from being able to do things digitally."

Ramirez leads Village Insights as CEO and the new platform is expected to formally launch it's Open World platform next month. Click here to read more.

This Houston startup is creating a digital platform to create collisions and spark innovation. Image via villageinsights.com

Exclusive: Houston startup is creating a unique digital network to connect innovative communities

virtually innovating

About 10 years ago, Andrew Ramirez was working internally with a corporate team at a Fortune 500 company to build a digital platform that would connect employees to work collaboratively.

"What we really realized is that once you put a lot of people together with a common theme or mission, we started to see a lot of interesting ideas pop up organically," Ramirez tells InnovationMap. "They were creating these collisions without any geographical boundaries."

About a decade later, Ramirez and his former co-worker on the project Mike Francis, revisited the idea of creating this collaborative digital space — with today's technology — for the greater innovation community, and Village Insights was born. Ramirez leads the company as CEO and the new platform is expected to formally launch it's Open World platform next month.

Village Insights allows users to join groups connected under a larger network. Image via villageinsights.com

Currently, Ramirez says Village Insights is targeting all the major players within innovation — startup development organizations, incubators, accelerators, academic partners, and more — to both house their internal networks but also connect them to the greater innovation landscape for idea sharing and problem solving collaboration on the web-based app.

"It's an organizational network — you can bring your community together," Ramirez says. "And on top of that, we have social and productivity features. Really what we're trying to do is create collisions. We feel that innovation and solving problems is best done with a group — the village concept."

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the need for Village Insights became even greater.

"The world has changed," Ramirez says. "I feel like people are trying to find the right balance of the physical but also the productivity gain from being able to do things digitally."

But Village Insights — which grew throughout the pandemic, hiring a team Ramirez hadn't even met — isn't just a pandemic solution, nor is Ramirez trying to replace in-person collisions.

"We want to be the digital mesh around the physical world," he says.

Sensing an opportunity amid the pandemic, Francis approached Halliburton Labs with his idea. Francis, founder and CEO of Nanotech was a member of the accelerator. Halliburton Labs and Village Insights collaborated to create a beta of the technology focused on clean energy innovation, called Constellation. The platform has been used by Halliburton's network and will be featured as a part of their Pitch Day event on Sept. 30.

"We learned a lot as a startup working with a corporate entity," Ramirez says. "We got to collaborate together and think about different ways to provide value for Constellation and the clean energy community. We learned that people are looking for a way to connect, and we're just now getting started on that journey."

Buoyed by the success with Constellation, Ramirez says Village Insights is in fundraising mode to support its growth. The company has plans for a $1 million seed round with a series A round to follow in the next eight to 12 months.

Andrew Ramirez and Mike Francis originally worked on a similar project 10 years ago. Photos courtesy

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Houston college joins inaugural workforce accelerator supported by Google

hands-on training

Houston City College (HCC) is one of 15 community colleges from around the country to be selected for the first-ever Workforce Futures Accelerator.

The three-year effort is supported by Google.org, the tech company’s philanthropic arm, and led by the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT), a non-profit educational organization that represents over 500 community, junior, and technical colleges. The accelerator focuses on helping colleges embed virtual, employer-sponsored training opportunities into short-term workforce training programs, giving participants access to opportunities that they might otherwise receive through internships or other "work-based learning" stints.

"The Workforce Futures Accelerator reflects the Houston City College mission of offering a high-quality, affordable education for workforce training and career development," Pretta VanDible Stallworth, HCC trustee and chair-elect of the ACCT board of directors, said in a news release. "Advancing student success and creating pathways to opportunities ensures that our students are well equipped to succeed and build a secure future in today's economy.”

Through the accelerator, HCC is tasked with fusing online project-based learning opportunities with its workforce education programs. The idea is to give students hands-on experiences working on projects sponsored by employers, allowing them to gain real-world knowledge in the process.

HCC will select two workforce programs that meet the accelerator’s criteria and insert into them into coursework. In the second and third year of the accelerator, the selected colleges are expected to scale the programs by adding instructors and programs to develop a network of to support their continued implementation.

“Participation by HCC will strengthen how we provide students with career-connected learning experiences that complement their classroom education and align with the needs of employers,” HCC Chancellor Margaret Ford Fisher added in the news release. “We are focused on ‘future forward’ strategies to meet the present and future needs of our region’s businesses.”

Two other Texas colleges were chosen to participate in the accelerator: Lamar Institute of Technology in Beaumont and Grayson College in Denison.

The remaining cohort includes:

Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey
Central Louisiana Community College in Alexandria, Louisiana
Clark State College in Springfield, Ohio
Great Basin College in Elko, Nevada
Heartland Community College in Normal, Illinois
Hudson County Community College in Jersey City, New Jersey
Manchester Community College in Manchester, New Hampshire
Mesa Community College in Mesa, Arizona
Mohave College in Kingman, Arizona
San Joaquin Delta Community College in Stockton, California
San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico
West Virginia University Parkersburg in Parkersburg, West Virginia

New report ranks Texas among top 10 states where AI could disrupt jobs

AI Workforce

A new nationwide report examining where AI could "reshape" the most jobs has ranked Texas No. 9 among the most at-risk states for AI job disruption.

The new SmartAsset report compared all 50 states and the District of Columbia to calculate the estimated percent of the workforce employed in the 26 occupations with the highest AI exposure, as determined by June 2026 research by the Virginia Economic Information and Analytics Division.

The findings revealed that 500,000 Texas workers, or 3.55 percent of the total workforce, are employed in occupations with "high exposure to potential AI disruption."

This also places the Lone Star State as the 9th most at-risk state in the U.S. where AI exposure can lead to "declining hiring demand, wage pressure, task automation, and other forms of disruption."

"States with larger concentrations of highly exposed occupations could experience more pronounced labor-market changes, particularly in roles where core tasks are more vulnerable to AI-driven restructuring," the report's author wrote.

Texas' biggest cities, like Houston and Austin, are known for their thriving tech and business industries, and the study noted that many of the occupations within those sectors are the most at risk. The Virginia Economic Information and Analytics Division said the top five most AI-exposed occupations in the U.S. are: mathematicians, proofreaders, correspondence clerks, court reporters, and media and communication workers. Additionally, computer programmers, database administrators, web developers, telephone operators, and communications equipment operators round out the top 10 most at-risk positions.

These are the 16 remaining occupations most exposed to AI disruption, in order:

Data Entry Keyers
Statistical Assistants
Office Support Workers
Interpreters and Translators
Database Architects
Software Quality Assurance Analysts
Medical Transcriptionists
Software Developers
Writers and Authors
Payroll Clerks
Web Designers
Miscellaneous Computer Occupations
Insurance Claims Processors
Telemarketers
Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Programmers
Bookkeeping and Accounting Clerks

A separate SmartAsset report from April 2026 found about 20.5 percent of Texas workers use AI to do their jobs in some capacity. That trend will continue to shift further as employers and employees choose to adopt — or reject — AI implementation.

Across the U.S., Washington topped the list as the state with the highest concentration of AI-exposed jobs, with nearly 5.7 percent of the state's workforce employed in the 26 most at-risk positions. SmartAsset said Washington's high prevalence of technology companies is a significant factor that skyrocketed the state to the top of the list.

"Home to major technology companies including Microsoft, Amazon, T-Mobile and Expedia, the state has large numbers of computer programmers and software developers, two occupations with high exposure," the report said.

Meanwhile, Mississippi ranked No. 51 with the lowest concentration of AI-exposed jobs in the nation. About 22,500 workers in Mississippi, or 1.93 percent of its workforce, are at risk for AI disruption.

The top 10 states where AI could reshape the most jobs are:

No. 1 – Washington
No. 2 – Virginia
No. 3 – District of Columbia
No. 4 – California
No. 5 – Utah
No. 6 – Maryland
No. 7 – Colorado
No. 8 – New Hampshire
No. 9 – Texas
No. 10 – North Carolina

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

UH lands $1.2M NIH grant to fight superbugs using AI, quantum sensing

drug defense

The fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA is getting science fiction-like upgrades at the University of Houston thanks to a new four-year, $1.26 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The university says the recent funding brings total federal support up to $3.5 million for 11 years for the project, which uses AI and quantum-sensing technology to better understand how bacterial proteins develop resistance to drugs.

Any medical professional will tell you that one of the worst things that can happen is almost killing an infection. Bacteria that survive attacks from conventional antibiotic treatments emerge tougher, more resistant and more aggressive than before–making them much harder to treat. A good example is the superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

UH chemistry professors Yuhong Wang and Shoujun Xu are working on this issue. They know full well that fighting superbugs requires new technology and new approaches, which is what they aim to pioneer with their new grant.

“Drug-resistant bacterial infections such as MRSA are becoming harder to treat, creating an urgent need for faster ways to understand how antibiotics and other small molecules interact with bacterial proteins,” Wang said in a news release.

Wang and Xu’s work centers around GTP, a cellular fuel that can cause tiny changes to a cell's structure when it mutates. Sometimes, those shape changes make it easier for drugs to breach the wall and attack the cells.

The UH scientists are employing AlphaFold, an AI-powered tool that can scan large molecular libraries in seconds. From these models, they can see promising drug combinations for future testing.

Once identified, the team uses their invention, super-resolution force spectroscopy, to monitor the cells. Tiny magnetic beads are attached to genetic material, then magnified to see how strong that material is when pulled. They can measure this incredible microscopic process through an atomic magnetometer, typically used in quantum physics. Combined, all these tools allow a high-definition look at how each molecule might respond to new chemical approaches.

“We're the only chemists in the world that use an atomic magnetometer for biological research,” Xu said. “It's a technique developed by physicists, and there is usually a gap between techniques developed by physicists and biological applications. Yuhong and I have been bridging that gap together for the past 10 years.”

Eventually, Wang and Xu hope to develop powerful software that can be used by drug manufacturers to model cellular responses. With enough predictive data, the software could even get ahead of superbugs’ own mutation, allowing drugs to be developed before new strains arrive.

"We want an algorithm where you input a protein sequence, score the mutation hotspots, and develop new inhibitors before a drug-resistant species even emerges," Wang added.

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