2 Houston startups win big at SXSW 2025 pitch competition

winner, winner

Two Houston startups won the SXSW Pitch showcase in their respective categories. Photo via Getty Images

Houston had a strong showing at this week's SXSW Pitch showcase in Austin, with two local startups claiming top prizes in their respective categories.

Little Place Labs, a Houston space data startup, won the Security, GovTech & Space competition. Clean-tech company Helix Earth, which spun out of Rice University and was incubated at Greentown Labs, won in the Smart Cities, Transportation & Sustainability contest.

As one of SWSX's marquee events, held March 8-10, the pitch competition featured 45 finalists, selected from 589 applicants, in nine categories.

"We faced impressive competition from a well-chosen set of finalists, and we're honored to be chosen as the winners. One of the judges even commented, ‘Who knew you could make air conditioning sexy,’” Brad Husick, Helix's co-founder and chief business officer, said in a release.

Helix Earth was launched in 2022 and is known for its space capsule air filtration system that was co-developed for NASA. The commercial air conditioner add-on technology, now in a pilot phase, has been used to retrofit HVAC systems for commercial buildings and can save up to 50 percent of the net energy, cutting down on emissions and operating costs, according to the company. Its co-founder and CEO Rawand Rasheed was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Energy and Green Tech list for 2025.

“This win validates our mission to drive sustainable innovation in commercial air conditioning and beyond. We are excited about the future of Helix Earth and the impact we will have in reducing energy consumption and emissions," Rasheed said in a statement.

Little Place Labs echoed that sentiment with a post on LinkedIn celebrating the win.

"This all started with a simple mission: To deliver real-time space insights to help first responders, mission planners, and decision-makers act before problems arise,” the post read. "Today, that mission feels even stronger."

The company uses advanced AI and machine learning to deliver near-real-time space analytics for both ground and space-based applications. Its software aims to help first responders, mission planners and decision-makers detect anomalies and make informed decisions quickly. It was co-founded in 2020 at Oxford by Houstonian and CEO Bosco Lai and Gaurav Bajaj and participated in the 2023 AWS Space Accelerator.

Tempesst Droneworx, a veteran-owned software company that provides real-time contextual intelligence for early warning detection, took home the Best Speed Pitch prize.

Jesse Martinez, founder of invincible, and Anu Puvvada of KPMG were two judges representing Houston.

According to SXSW, 647 companies have participated in SXSW Pitch over the years, with over 93 percent receiving funding and acquisitions totaling nearly $23.2 billion. See the full list of 2025 winners here.

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PHIOGEN, based at Texas Medical Center Innovation, is headed to Austin next month. Photo courtesy of TMC

Houston biotech startup selected to pitch at SXSW

austin bound

Houston biotech startup PHIOGEN is among 45 finalists that will present at this year’s SXSW Pitch showcase in Austin.

PHIOGEN is one of five food, nutrition, and health startups that will participate in the pitch competition, set for March 9 and 10. A panel of judges will listen to the pitches and then pick the winners. Since 2009, SXSW Pitch finalists have raised more than $23.2 billion in funding.

PHIOGEN has developed the world’s first biogenetics technology platform to harness the power of bacteriophages in the fight against serious drug-resistant infections. Bacteriophages — viruses that are found in bacterial cells — “are ubiquitous in the environment and are recognized as the most abundant biological agent on earth,” according to an article published in 2022 by StatPearls.

Founded in 2023, PHIOGEN is a spinoff of the Baylor College of Medicine’s TAILOR Labs. The startup, based at the Texas Medical Center’s Innovation Hub, has attracted more than $5 million in funding.

“Nothing about our treatments is fabricated; it boils down to creating natural environments that mimic real-life infections, driving biological changes to create ‘super phages’ against the superbugs,” Amanda Burkardt, CEO of PHIOGEN, said in 2023. “As a result, we receive high-performing phage fighters that are trained and ready to deliver safe and effective treatments for clinical applications.”

Professional services firm KPMG is the main sponsor of SXSW Pitch.

Six of this year’s SXSW Pitch judges are from Houston:

  • Heath Butler of Mercury Fund
  • Jesse Martinez of LSA Global
  • Trevor Purvis of the Houston Astros
  • Anu Puvvada of KPMG
  • Irene Tang of StartOut
  • Nate Thompson of HTX Sports Tech

“2024 is an exciting year for startups, and we are looking forward to showcasing these inspiring companies that are making waves in their respective industries and the world as a whole, as well as help connect them with the resources needed to continue advancing,” says Chris Valentine, producer of SXSW Pitch.

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Youngro Lee of Brassica, Anu Puvvada of KPMG Studio, and Brock Murphy of Parent ProTech. Photos courtesy

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 corporate innovation to fintech — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.


Youngro Lee, founder of Brassica

Youngro Lee joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss his latest endeavor on his mission to democratize investing. Photo courtesy

Brassica Technologies, a fintech infrastructure company that's providing a platform for alternative assets, is just the next step in his career in using tech to democratize finance. The idea came from Lee's experience as a startup founder and fintech exec — first at NextSeed and then at Republic, which acquired NextSeed two years ago.

"The reason why I thought this was what I wanted to focus on next was exactly because it was an issue I struggled with as a founder of NextSeed," Lee says on the show. "The backend was always an issue. There's not one single vendor that we felt really understood our business, was doing it efficiently, or enabled us to deliver those services to our end clients."

Lee shares more about the future of Brassica, including the challenges he's facing within regulation and the state of fintech as a whole, on the podcast. He also weighs in on how he's seen the Houston innovation ecosystem grow and develop alongside his own entrepreneurial journey. Read more.

Anu Puvvada, KPMG Studio leader

Anu Puvvada, KPMG Studio leader, shares how her team is advancing software solutions while navigating hype cycles and solving billion-dollar-problems. Photo courtesy of KPMG

In 2021, KPMG, a New York-based global audit, accounting, and advisory service provider, formed a new entity to play in the innovation space. The Houston-based team finds innovative software that benefit KPMG's clients across industries.

In an interview with InnovationMap, Anu Puvvada, leader of KPMG Studio, shares more about the program, its first spin out, and why she's passionate about leading this initiative from Houston.

"When you think about innovation as a whole, it's mired with risk and uncertainty," she says. "You never know if something's going to work or not. And part of what we have to do with any idea that we're building in the studio or anything that our clients are doing around innovation, we have to do as much as we can to mitigate that risk and uncertainty. And that's kind of what KPMG's wheelhouse is." Read more.

Brock Murphy, Parent ProTech co-founder

Brock Murphy launched Parent ProTech last fall. Photo via parentprotech.com

Houston-based Parent ProTech is a one-stop shop for parental education on technology and applications that their kids use.

“Our goal is to make everyone the best digital parent possible,” Brock Murphy, Parent ProTech co-founder, tells InnovationMap. “We understand technology and the role it plays in influencing the next generation. So we help parents when it comes to understanding the platforms, how to use them and how to unlock the parental controls that can be hidden, deeper into these platforms.”

Murphy — with co-founder Drew Wooten and creative director Joshua Adams — launched the platform in September 2022. Since then, Parent ProTech has made its mark through partnerships with schools in Texas. Read more.

Anu Puvvada, KPMG Studio leader, shares how her team is advancing software solutions while navigating hype cycles and solving billion-dollar-problems. Photo courtesy of KPMG

How this Houston-based studio is tackling billion-dollar problems with internal innovation

Q&A

In 2021, KPMG, a New York-based global audit, accounting, and advisory service provider, formed a new entity to play in the innovation space. The Houston-based team finds innovative software that benefit KPMG's clients across industries.

"We're really focused on transformative businesses that we can offer our clients in the next three to five years to solve fairly large problems," Anu Puvvada, KPMG Studio leader, tells InnovationMap.

Now, almost two years later, KPMG Studio has spun out its first company, AI-based security startup Cranium, which has raised $7 million in a seed round led by SYN Ventures with support from KPMG.

Established to advance internal innovation, KPMG Studio's technologies don't always get spun out into startups like Cranium, but with support of the team, the early-stage ideas receive guidance from the company's resources with the potential to be rolled into KPMG's suite of services for its clients.

In an interview with InnovationMap, Puvvada shares more about the program, the Cranium spin out, and why she's passionate about leading this initiative from Houston.

InnovationMap: Tell me about KPMG Studio's structure and your overall goal with the program.

Anu Puvvada: I like to think about it more around framing. We frame the studio around three pillars: incubate, accelerate and amplify. We take in a lot of ideas that come from the business and from our clients and we incubate and see which of them are really high growth solving like a very large problem across verticals and horizontals. When I say a big problem — it's got to be a $1 billion-plus problem. With Cranium, we saw some very early indicators, like a rise in AI adoption amongst our clients. We saw that AI was in this spot where it was going to hit an exponential growth marker. We also saw a rise in cyber attacks. All of that plus conversations with clients made us realize that there's there's something big brewing here.

We're looking at a ton of ideas, and then parsing out maybe 10 that we create into the next Cranium. And then in accelerate, we're finding early adopters and we're growing the idea, building it, raising venture capital for the idea if we decide to spin it out.

IM: Seems like a mutually beneficial relationship between KPMG and these innovators, right?

AP: I would say it's good for KPMG because it allows us to innovate differently and innovate with agility. My group actually operates as a startup within a large organization. And then we create this ecosystem around startups inside KPMG, so when it exits, it's got the basis to run on its own. That's important for us because it gives us agility, it lets us really capitalize on our brand. It's not just what it brings us, but also what it brings our clients.

There's a big competitive advantage to innovating inside KPMG. These innovators get to work inside our walls protected by the infrastructure of KPMG. They, they get a technology team to help them build the idea. And they get to use their brand of KPMG, use our marketing engine, our comms engine, like everything that's behind us. A startup outside, it doesn't get any of that. So, it almost like accelerates them into market when the spin out happens. We use the differentiators and the competitive advantage of KPMG in order to amplify the story of that startup and their value proposition in the market.

IM: So there are two paths for these technologies, right?

AP: We either have what we call spin ins, which means it's created and spins into the business or we have spin outs, which is what Cranium is. We classify spin outs into its own startup or a sale of an asset. And then for the spin in, we would license to our clients under the mothership of KPMG.

IM: Is the studio operating completely in Houston?

AP: We source our ideas from all over nationally. I'm in Houston and a lot of my support team is actually in Houston as well. And I work with a lot of the Houston ecosystem around innovation. I really see Houston as a big future market. We are at the center of climate and ESG, the space economy, and medicine. Those are three big like curves that are going to be hitting in the next five years. So, it is integral for studio to be integrated into that ecosystem to position KPMG for the future.

IM: What's your vision for the studio?

AP: I definitely see us taking in more ideas into studio to build internally for our pioneers, which is what we call our innovators — Jonathan Dambrot, who is the founder of Cranium, he's the pioneer. We'll definitely be doing more Craniums that spin out of the firm. And we have a number that are spinning into the firm already.

I also see us evolving to bring in external startups into the studio so we can also give them the entire ecosystem a way to be lifted up and to shepherd each other into the future.

It's really important that anything that we invest in and we work on is staying measured through these hype cycles that are happening. We need to make sure that these ideas are grounded in the problem that's being solved in an adaptable way and that there's a strong market need for it. That's something that the studio really spends a lot of time doing in the beginning, which kind of helps mitigate some of these hype cycles for us and our clients.

When you think about innovation as a whole, it's mired with risk and uncertainty. You never know if something's going to work or not. And part of what we have to do with any idea that we're building in the studio or anything that our clients are doing around innovation, we have to do as much as we can to mitigate that risk and uncertainty. And that's kind of what KPMG's wheelhouse is.

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This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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Houston lands $14M in latest CPRIT grants to advance cancer, lab-on-chip research

cancer funding

Thanks to a $4 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, the University of Houston has recruited a top-tier researcher developing AI-powered lab-on-a-chip technology for early cancer detection.

Tianhong Cui, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and an adjunct professor of physiology and biomedical engineering at the Mayo Clinic, specializes in microelectromechanical systems and advanced manufacturing at microscale and nanoscale levels. In addition to lab-on-a-chip systems, Cui focuses on biosensors and water sensors.

Lab-on-a-chip devices deliver big results in a tiny package

The CPRIT grant supports Cui’s development of a microscale lab-on-a-chip system for early cancer detection and post-therapy monitoring.

“Lab-on-a-chip technology crams an entire lab’s worth of functions into a tiny device roughly the size of a USB stick,” according to Built In.

Common uses for the technology include medical diagnostics, point-of-care testing, and environmental monitoring.

Lab-on-a-chip work being carried out at UH and elsewhere in Houston promises to revolutionize cancer detection and treatment. For instance, Houston biotech company iBiochips, a spinout from the Houston Methodist Research Institute, makes lab-on-a-chip devices that bolster cancer detection and therapy.

Four local organizations gain $10 million in CPRIT grants

Four other Houston-area organizations received an additional $10 million in grants in CPRIT’s latest round of funding:

  • University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center received two $2 million grants to recruit researchers Zheqi Li of Harvard University’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Nikolaos Koundouros of Weill Cornell Medicine.
  • Rice University received one $2 million grant to recruit researcher Maria Akoppyan, formerly of the University of Southern California.
  • UT Medical Branch at Galveston received one $2 million grant to recruit researcher Cristina Santarossa of Johns Hopkins University.
  • Houston-based biopharma company Pulmotect received one $2 million grant to support better outcomes for cancer patients by activating immunity in the lungs as a first line of defense against germs.

The funding was part of $35 million in new CPRIT grants for institutions and companies across Texas approved at the organization's most recent meeting. To date, CPRIT has awarded more than $4.2 billion in grants.

“These awards support research across the cancer continuum from prevention to new classes of therapeutics,” said Dr. Scott Hiebert, chief scientific officer of CPRIT, said in a news release. “The work of these investigators will impact the lives of Texans across the state.”

2 Houston high schools soar as America's best for 2026, says U.S. News

Honor Roll

Houston ISD's Carnegie Vanguard High School is standing tall as one of the 25 best high schools in America, according to U.S. News and World Report's 2026-2027 Best High Schools rankings.

DeBakey High School for Health Professions also ranks among the top 100 nationally, and 23 more Houston-area schools join them at the top of the class in Texas.

Each year, U.S. News evaluates approximately 27,000 public high schools on six factors: college readiness, college curriculum breadth, state assessment proficiency, state assessment performance, underserved student performance, and graduation rates.

The highest ranking public schools provide the best educational environments where "students demonstrated outstanding outcomes above expectations in math, reading and science state assessments, earned qualifying scores on an array of college-level exams, and graduated in high proportions."

"Every student deserves a pathway to success, and that journey often begins with selecting the right school," said LaMont Jones, Ed.D., managing editor for education at U.S. News. "The 2026-2027 Best High Schools rankings empower families with the valuable data and transparency they need to help make the best educational choices for them. We are proud to offer this essential resource to help shape the next generation of college-ready students."

Top ranking Houston schools
Carnegie Vanguard High School once again leads in Texas as the No. 2 best high school, and soared as No. 25 in U.S. News' national list of the best high schools, up from No. 42 last year.

DeBakey High School for Health Professions is the 9th best high school in Texas and ranks No. 91 nationally (down from No. 75 last year).

Three more local schools ranked among the best STEM schools in the country: Memorial High School in Spring Branch ISD (No. 86), Seven Lakes High School in Katy ISD (No. 96), and Dulles High School in Fort Bend ISD (No. 99).

In U.S. News' ranking of the best charter schools, four Houston-area schools made the top 100: Spring Branch ISD's Westchester Academy for International Studies (No. 62), Harmony School of Innovation - Katy (No. 72), Harmony School of Discovery - Houston (No. 78), and YES Prep - North Central (No. 100).

Other Houston-area schools that rank among the 100 best in Texas are:

  • No. 17 – Kerr High School, Alief ISD, Houston
  • No. 24 – Young Women's College Prep Academy, Houston ISD
  • No. 25 – Kinder High School for Performing and Visual Arts, Houston ISD
  • No. 31 – Challenge Early College High School, Houston ISD
  • No. 39 – Westchester Academy for International Studies, Spring Branch ISD, Houston
  • No. 44 – Tomball Star Academy, Tomball ISD
  • No. 45 – Harmony School of Innovation - Katy
  • No. 46 – North Houston Early College High School, Houston ISD
  • No. 51 – Eastwood Academy, Houston ISD
  • No. 52 – Seven Lakes High School, Katy ISD
  • No. 54 – Harmony School of Discovery - Houston
  • No. 55 – Energy Institute High School, Houston ISD
  • No. 56 – Spring Early College Academy, Spring ISD
  • No. 63 – Sharpstown International School, Houston ISD
  • No. 66 – YES Prep - North Central, Houston
  • No. 73 – Tompkins High School, Katy ISD
  • No. 76 – YES Prep - Southeast, Houston
  • No. 80 – Harmony School of Innovation - Sugar Land
  • No. 81 – Clements High School, Fort Bend ISD, Sugar Land
  • No. 82 – Houston Academy for International Studies, Houston ISD
  • No. 86 – Jordan High School, Katy ISD
  • No. 88 – Victory Early College High School, Aldine ISD, Houston
  • No. 96 – Clear Horizons Early College High School, Clear Creek ISD, Houston

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Intuitive Machines lands $600M satellite deal, NASA ‘spacecraft bus’ contract

space deals

Houston-based space infrastructure company Intuitive Machines has scored two astronomical deals.

The deals add to the company’s soaring success. As of June 30, Intuitive Machines had a record-high $1.8 billion backlog of orders, a $1.5 billion increase from the end of last year. The current backlog includes orders for more than 80 spacecraft.

The company, which went public in 2023, expects this year’s revenue to total $900 million to $1 billion. In the first half of 2026, Intuitive Machines generated nearly $393 million in revenue.

Intuitive Machines estimates its total available market is valued at more than $150 billion.

$600 million-plus deal represents ‘important milestone’

On Monday, Intuitive Machines said it picked up a $600 million-plus deal to develop three commercial satellites for an undisclosed customer over the course of about two years.

Intuitive Machines says it will design, manufacture, set up and support several spacecraft “for a critical communications infrastructure mission.”

Steve Altemus, the company’s CEO, says the deal represents “an important milestone for Intuitive Machines and reflects the confidence our customers place in our ability to deliver high-performance spacecraft for a broad range of mission needs.”

Company nails down NASA deal for ‘spacecraft bus’

A day after announcing the $600 million-plus deal, Intuitive Machines said it secured a new contract with NASA.

Intuitive Machines says NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will use the company’s IM 300 “spacecraft bus” for an EAGLE-VSWIR Earth observation mission. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2028.

Aside from supplying the IM 300 bus, Intuitive Machines will carry out mission support services.

The low-Earth-orbit mission will be equipped with Intuitive Machines’ hyperspectral visible to shortwave infrared (VSWIR) instrument. This technology sees colors and details that aren’t visible to the human eye.

The instrument is “designed to perform surface biology and geology observations from Earth orbit while demonstrating technologies that could support future lunar and Mars exploration missions,” Intuitive Machines says.

Intuitive Machines builds mission-critical spacecraft, systems, and infrastructure for business and government customers. To date, the company has produced more than 300 spacecraft, delivered over 575 pounds of payload to the moon and launched about 100 satellites.

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