Experts: Houston's VC ecosystem has set the foundation — now we need scale

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Fervo Energy's recent IPO is a signal of where Houston's venture ecosystem stands—and where it can go. Photo via Pexels

Fervo Energy went public earlier this summer. The Houston geothermal company priced its IPO at $27 per share, raised $1.89 billion, and opened the next morning at a market capitalization north of $10 billion. By most measures, it is the largest venture-backed cleantech IPO in history and an unambiguous win for Houston. It’s also a useful moment to look at where Houston's venture ecosystem stands and where it can go. The highlight: Houston's venture ecosystem has real foundations and, with increased company formation activity, can grow into the scale our city's ambitions deserve.

A Houston energy story in the national recovery

The recent uptick in Houston venture activity follows national trends. U.S. venture deal count contracted roughly 22 percent from its 2021 peak through 2024 before rebounding to about 16,700 rounds in 2025. Houston's 23 percent increase in VC funding from 2023 to 2024 is part of a national recovery of comparable magnitude over the same time window.

The energy sector is where Houston exhibits unique trends—and where the story turns clearly positive. (Houston's strong health and space sectors deserve their own separate consideration.) By deal count, energy-related rounds have accounted for 15 to 20 percent of Houston activity, roughly consistent over the past few years.

By capital, energy's share surged from about 14 percent in 2023 to over 60 percent in 2025, driven by a small number of large Houston-headquartered rounds, primarily in geothermal and related technologies. Fervo is the obvious anchor, but Sage Geosystems, Quaise Energy, Zeta Energy, Vaulted Deep, Applied Carbon and Mariana Minerals have all closed meaningful rounds. Houston is concentrated and accelerating as an energy capital market, an invaluable position to build upon.

From foundation to scale

The institutional pieces are in place. Greentown Labs, Activate, the Ion and others have built sector-specialized infrastructure most cities would struggle to assemble. Fervo itself is an alum of both Activate and Greentown Labs. Mercury Fund closed its $160 million Fund V, its largest ever. Houston Angel Network, GOOSE Capital, Fathom Fund, and broader pre-seed and seed capital coverage are here. The Houston $10 million-plus Series A list now includes 40 rounds since 2021, which break roughly into two eras. While 2021 to 2022 was biotech-heavy, with companies like Sporos Bioventures, RadioMedix, Cellenkos and Coya Therapeutics, 2024 to 2025 has tilted clearly toward energy, climate, and critical minerals, with Vaulted Deep, Applied Carbon, Mariana Minerals, Sage Geosystems and Ignis H2 Energy among them.

What’s less developed is the volume of seed-stage companies flowing into that capital. Imagine a dozen more Fervos coming out of that infrastructure over the next decade, each generating jobs, recycled founder capital, and the next wave of operators and angel investors. That is the kind of opportunity Houston has within reach if we build the company-formation pipeline to feed it. To be relevant on the national stage as a venture market, and to drive an economy the size of Houston's into the 2030s, the city needs to be doing closer to 20 Series A rounds per month rather than per year. That throughput implies roughly 1,000 seed rounds per year, feeding the funnel at a 20 percent to 30 percent graduation rate. Reaching such throughput depends on how many new founders Houston produces and how quickly our innovation ecosystem can help them achieve lift-off.

Houston in context

The comparative picture brings the scaling challenge into focus. Between 2021 and 2024, Houston-area startups closed between 126 and 153 disclosed venture rounds per year, against a national count between 9,854 and 14,125. That places Houston at a little over 1 percent of the U.S. deal count. For comparison, Austin ran about three times Houston's deal count each year.

At the Series A level, Houston closed between 12 and 24 rounds in any given year. The median Houston Series A across the period was about $10.7 million, compared with $15.4 million in San Francisco. Houston founders are raising fewer and smaller Series A rounds than founders in peer metros, which points directly to where Houston has the most room to grow.

The unicorn picture tells the same story. From 2021 through 2025, the U.S. produced 590 venture-backed unicorns. Four were Houston-based: Solugen and Axiom Space in 2021, Cart.com in 2023, and Fervo Energy in 2024. Adding HighRadius from 2020 brings Houston's all-time total to five. Austin added 19 over the same five-year window. The path from here is to make Houston's entries on lists like these less the exception and more the rule.

Where this leads

Houston has a real opportunity to become the deepest, most credible energy and climate capital market in the country, with the company formation, talent and operator density to support it. The data shows the foundation is already in place. Fervo, Solugen and the growing roster of energy-adjacent Series A graduates are proof. Fervo's IPO is the first of what should be many. Houston has not had a venture-backed cleantech liquidity event of this scale before, and the city now has one to reference, recruit against and build on. With increased company formation at the seed and pre-seed stages, a Fervo-scale outcome need not be a generational event in Houston, but instead, it can become part of a chain reaction powering the city's economy.

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Stephanie T. Schmidt, PhD, is the founder of a stealth startup, a Venture Fellow at Energy Transition Ventures, and an Executive MBA candidate at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business. Lawson Gow is the Chief Operating Officer of Greentown Labs. The full Houston VC landscape report is available at Energy Transition Ventures and CleanTech.Org.

Sources: Crunchbase, PitchBook-NVCA, Carta
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The series A funding will support the deployment of its biochar machines across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Photo courtesy of Applied Carbon

Houston climatetech startup raises $21.5M series A to grow robotics solution

seeing green

A Houston energy tech startup has raised a $21.5 million series a round of funding to support the advancement of its automated technology that converts field wastes into stable carbon.

Applied Carbon, previously known as Climate Robotics, announced that its fresh round of funding was led by TO VC, with participation from Congruent Ventures, Grantham Foundation, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, S2G Ventures, Overture.vc, Wireframe Ventures, Autodesk Foundation, Anglo American, Susquehanna Foundation, US Endowment for Forestry and Communities, TELUS Pollinator Fund for Good, and Elemental Excelerator.

The series A funding will support the deployment of its biochar machines across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

"Multiple independent studies indicate that converting crop waste into biochar has the potential to remove gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year, while creating trillions of dollars in value for the world's farmers," Jason Aramburu, co-founder and CEO of Applied Carbon, says in a news release. "However, there is no commercially available technology to convert these wastes at low cost.

"Applied Carbon's patented in-field biochar production system is the first solution that can convert crop waste into biochar at a scale and a cost that makes sense for broad acre farming," he continues.

Applied Carbon rebranded in June shortly after being named a top 20 finalist in XPRIZE's four-year, $100 million global Carbon Removal Competition. The company also was named a semi-finalist and awarded $50,000 from the Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Pilot Prize program in May.

"Up to one-third of excess CO2 that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the start of human civilization has come from humans disturbing soil through agriculture," Joshua Phitoussi, co-founder and managing partner at TO VC, adds. "To reach our net-zero objectives, we need to put that carbon back where it belongs.

"Biochar is unique in its potential to do so at a permanence and price point that are conducive to mass-scale adoption of carbon dioxide removal solutions, while also leaving farmers and consumers better off thanks to better soil health and nutrition," he continues. "Thanks to its technology and business model, Applied Carbon is the only company that turns that potential into reality."

The company's robotic technology works in field, picking up agricultural crop residue following harvesting and converts it into biochar in a single pass. The benefits included increasing soil health, improving agronomic productivity, and reducing lime and fertilizer requirements, while also providing a carbon removal and storage solution.

"We've been looking at the biochar sector for over a decade and Applied Carbon's in-field proposition is incredibly compelling," adds Joshua Posamentier, co-founder and managing partner of Congruent Ventures. "The two most exciting things about this approach are that it profitably swings the agricultural sector from carbon positive to carbon negative and that it can get to world-scale impact, on a meaningful timeline, while saving farmers money."

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This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.

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Announcing the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards finalists

Inspirational Innovators

InnovationMap is proud to reveal the finalists for the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards.

The sixth annual Houston Innovation Awards program returns in an all-digital format this fall to honor the best of Houston's innovation ecosystem, including startups, entrepreneurs, mentors, and more.

Finalists were determined by our esteemed panel of judges, comprised of past award winners and InnovationMap editorial leadership.

The panel reviewed applications across 10 prestigious categories to determine our finalists. They will select the winner for each category, except for Startup of the Year, which will be chosen by the public via online voting launching later this month.

We will announce the honoree of our annual Trailblazer Award in the coming weeks, then stay tuned as we unveil all of this year's winners on InnovationMap.com in mid-November.

Get to know our finalists in more detail through editorial spotlights leading up to the winner announcement. Without further ado, here are the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards finalists:

Minority-founded Business

Honoring an innovative startup founded or co-founded by BIPOC or LGBTQ+ representation:

  • AI Made Fun
  • Deep Anchor Solutions
  • HEXAspec
  • Prana Surgical
  • Torres Orbital Mining Inc.

Female-founded Business

Honoring an innovative startup founded or co-founded by a woman:

  • Adair
  • ARIX Technologies
  • Bairitone Health
  • FlowCellutions
  • ParaDocs Health

Energy Transition Business

Honoring an innovative startup providing a solution within renewables, climatetech, clean energy, alternative materials, circular economy and beyond:

  • Capwell Services
  • FlowCellutions
  • Hertha Metals
  • Mars Materials
  • Solidec

Health Tech Business

Honoring an innovative startup within the health and medical technology sectors:

  • Bairitone Health
  • InformAI Inc.
  • Prana Surgical
  • Skybound MedTech

Deep Tech Business

Honoring an innovative startup providing technology solutions based on substantial scientific or engineering challenges, including those in the AI, robotics and space sectors:

  • Casimir
  • Focis AI
  • Machine Saver Inc.
  • Square Robot
  • Venus Aerospace

Startup of the Year (People's Choice)

Honoring a startup celebrating a recent milestone or success. The winner will be selected by the community via an online voting experience:

  • Fluxworks
  • IronLattice
  • Lumino
  • Progress Report
  • Rosarium Health
  • Thread
  • TokenRoster

Scaleup of the Year

Honoring an innovative later-stage startup that's recently reached a significant milestone in company growth:

  • Erock
  • Hertha Metals
  • Venus Aerospace

Incubator/Accelerator of the Year

Honoring a local incubator or accelerator that is championing and fueling the growth of Houston startups:

  • Activate
  • Impact Hub Houston
  • MarMo Innovation

Mentor of the Year

Honoring an individual who dedicates their time and expertise to guide and support budding entrepreneurs:

  • Al Danto, Rice University
  • Eric Rubenstein, New Climate Ventures
  • Jeremy Pitts, Activate
  • Joe Alapat, Liongard
  • Kyle Judah, Rice University's Liu Idea Lab for Innovation & Entrepreneurship
  • Rachel Bickham, Bickham Services Unlimited LLC

Trailblazer Recipient

  • To be announced

Q&A: TIME100 AI honoree Angle Bush on building Houston’s artificial intelligence future

AI builder

Angle Bush, founder and CEO of Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, has a running question for her organization's members: Are you in the lab?

For Bush, inquiry isn’t philosophical. Learning about artificial intelligence is one thing. But building with it? Developing products, solving problems and creating a stake in the emerging AI economy? That’s another thing entirely—and exactly the point.

Bush’s own path into AI began in 2019 with an unlikely project: a robot named Usher, designed to bring her hot cocoa. She went down what she calls “YouTube University” to figure out how to build it and kept encountering another subject: artificial intelligence. Her curiosity eventually led her to a Houston AI event, where she noticed something missing.

She didn’t see a full reflection of herself, prompting a bigger question: If AI was becoming a transformative force, who would have a role in shaping it? Her answer became the premise for what came next: There couldn’t be an AI revolution without Black women.

Bush never finished Usher. Instead, she built Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, which has grown into a global organization with members across five continents.

Six years after launching BWIAI, the Houston founder was named to the 2026 TIME100 AI, TIME’s annual list recognizing 100 of the world’s most influential people in artificial intelligence.

The recognition is significant, but Bush is focused on what comes next: moving people beyond AI literacy and adoption and into creation—turning ideas into deployed products, building economic opportunity and ensuring more people have a hand in shaping the technology.

That mission brings Bush back to Houston, where she sees an opportunity to build on the city’s entrepreneurial culture while advancing conversations around responsible and ethical AI.

InnovationMap spoke with Bush about her TIME100 AI recognition, her push to get more people building with AI, Houston’s role in the technology’s future and her simple message: Get in the lab.

InnovationMap: What accomplishment at BWIAI are you most proud of?

Angle Bush: This past March, 11 of our members designed and deployed products and services utilizing artificial intelligence. For me, that's what we want to do. We're looking for builders. I continually ask our members: Are you in the lab? What are you building?

We have members here in Houston who built a conference app designed to help people better understand and navigate the conference experience. We also have Shonda and Shalisha Witherspoon, The Digital Twins, who created a patent assistant to help individuals interested in creating a patent for their product or service.

For me, watching those women move dreams from notebooks to deployment is more important than anything else. Notebooks are designed to hold your dreams, but not keep your dreams.

For NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference, if you wanted to participate as part of the Black Women in AI delegation, you had to build something. You couldn't just give me a concept and say, “Hey, Angle, I'm building ABC.” No. I needed you to design it, build it and deploy it. That will continually be one of the things I'm most proud of.

IM: Why is building so important to you?

AB: I've been saying that from the beginning because I tell people all the time: I can talk all day. We can have this conversation all day. But at the end of the day, are we building? What is the result?

Conversation is great. It can provide insight. But we have to put our hands on products. We have to put our hands on the APIs. We have to put our hands on that knowledge and ask, What do we do with it?

After you learn it, what are you doing with it? Are you going to create an app that helps your family? Are you creating an app that allows you to be part of the AI economy in a way that you can control? We're all going to be part of the AI economy at some point based on our careers and everything else. But what part of it can you control?

IM: What's next for Black Women in Artificial Intelligence?

AB: I want to continue our mission to educate, engage, embrace and empower Black women in AI. I want our organization to serve as an opportunity for women to build. How do we build? How do we understand how to build? How do we move beyond how we've been conditioned and start asking questions—not only of ourselves, but also the right questions of corporations?

Long term, I want us to continue building, and then I want us to pass that knowledge and insight down to the next generation. But I also want us to reach back to generations that may not have had this opportunity when they were younger. Maybe they were discouraged from going into STEM when they were younger. I want them to know that you can still build. It doesn't matter what your age is. It doesn't matter what college or university you attended. If you have an idea, we want to democratize AI so that you can build.

IM: BWIAI's story began in Houston. What role do you think Houston can play in the AI boom?

AB: First, I absolutely love Houston. I'm originally from Chicago and was raised in Saginaw, Michigan. But as they say, I got to Houston as quickly as I could. I think Houston has a great opportunity to position itself as a center of excellence for innovation. We have an entrepreneurial spirit and drive that I believe is unmatched.

And as much as we have entrepreneurs, we also have advocates who want to see the ethical use of AI. I think we'll see a rise in entrepreneurship. Houston is already building that ecosystem with the Ion and other entities coming into the fold.

As far as the mark Black Women in Artificial Intelligence will make in Houston, I think we'll bring a different perspective to the city's AI ecosystem. We'll make an impact on the entrepreneurial side, but also on the advocacy side when it comes to the responsible and ethical use of AI, which isn't always talked about.

IM: One of the biggest concerns surrounding AI is its potential to displace workers faster than people can acquire new skills. How should we be thinking about that?

AB: In full transparency, that's a tough question to answer because AI is moving so quickly. There are so many different models and so many different things happening that it can appear as though they're coming out of thin air.

For me, it's a matter of how we work with individuals so they can think more about the system than the model, because the models can retire. The impact this is going to have on communities globally is going to be an interesting dynamic. With the work we're doing at Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, this is our mitigation system: How can we bring individuals along so they can learn artificial intelligence and understand that there is a pivot—and it's not coming. It's happening right now, live.

How can we create an ecosystem where individuals get the training, support and understanding they need? For me, that's how we mitigate it: by creating a space where individuals can learn how to pivot.

IM: If readers take one thing away from this conversation, what do you want it to be?

AB: How important it is to be in the lab. It is important to start building today—not tomorrow, not next week, not next month. We have to be in the lab today. That's it.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

UTMB launches new department for space medicine, names inaugural leader

department launch

In space, no one can hear you scream—but they can hear you discuss your medical history and recent symptoms.

The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) announced last month that it would form a new Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine within its School of Public and Population Health under the leadership of Dr. Ronak V. Shah, who will serve as inaugural chair.

“Human exploration is changing rapidly, and the health challenges associated with distance, isolation, and limited resources are changing along with it,” Shah said in a news release. “Creating the Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine gives us an opportunity to build on decades of expertise at UTMB as we prepare for the future.”

The new department elevates UTMB’s existing Aerospace Medicine Division and provides "broader academic structure for expanding research, education, and collaboration across disciplines," according to the release. Shah was previously named director of the division in 2022 after serving as medical director of Johnson Space Center.

Space exploration in particular has a wide variety of highly specific medical side effects that are in need of the formalized study that the department will specialize in. For example, zero- and low-gravity environments cause everything from detached fingernails to flattened eyeballs. Even in modern, high-tech spacecraft, the human body feels the impacts of space.

It’s an area of medicine UTMB is uniquely suited for. Starting in the 1950s with NASA’s director of medical research Dr. Charles A. Berry, UTMB partnered with the blossoming era of exploration by monitoring astronauts. In 1993, UTMB and the NASA Johnson Space Center created the joint Aerospace Medicine Residency Program, which used bed facilities at the Galveston branch to simulate weightlessness. Wherever there has been a question about how flight and space affect health, odds are UTMB has been involved.

The Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine will launch several new initiatives soon. One planned for 2027 is an Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Fellowship that will allow scientists to study the physiology of high-pressure flight.

“In the era of a growing global space economy, we are revisiting questions such as who is flying, what is their destination, what vehicle will get them there?” Shah added in the release. “The answers to these questions will drive what research is needed and how we train the next generation.”

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