Ayoade Joy Ademuyewo founded Lokum last year to create a solution to better connecting medical specialists with health care facilities nationwide. Photo courtesy of Lokum

Ayoade Joy Ademuyewo says that anesthesiology is “the coolest thing in the world.” That’s why she became a certified registered nurse anesthetist.

And that career, which she says is “the perfect blend of science and art,” led to the creation of her startup, Lokum.

Lokum App is a matchmaking engine that aims to connect Ademuyewo’s peers with jobs. She explains that before her innovation, staffing for nurse anesthetists traditionally owed to job boards 30 years older than she was or to recruitment agencies that left them at a disadvantage.

“I didn't want to use that job board because it was sort of difficult to use and I didn't want to use it and a lot of other people felt the same way,” she recalls.

When a desperate friend asked for her help navigating the terrain of finding CRNA work as an independent contractor, Ademuyewo says the wheels began turning in her mind.

“I just thought, 'Why can't I open up my phone and see all of the available jobs to me, based on my preferences and my skills? And I can easily select from them to go to my next job.' And that's sort of where the questions started. And I just kept asking those questions. And I think about two or three years into asking the questions I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I think I'm starting a company,'” Ademuyewo says.

In the hours that she wasn’t in surgery, the CRNA began doing market research.

“As I was studying the market, and mapping it out, these really complex mind maps started to happen. And it was almost a natural conclusion that the more you understand the problem, the more the solution starts to appear to you,” she explains.

And she saw that the obvious solution was also potentially a big opportunity for her to create something entirely new — neither a job board nor an agency, but something entirely new. Ademuyewo calls Lokum a “matchmaking engine.” It takes the preferences, specialties and skills of CRNAs like her and matches them to jobs that make sense for them. To date, the pilot has connected users with around 200 hospitals and clinics in 20 states.

Fortunately, because there are so few CRNAs in practice, they are a unified bunch.

“It’s a really well-networked profession,” says Ademuyewo. “ I'm lucky to be in a profession where what we do is really special and really specialized.”

Because she was already part of the tight knit community, the founder had no trouble finding pilot customers. She worked with Houston-based Octaria Software to engineer the technical side of the app, as well as another local cybersecurity firm to work on infrastructure.

Lots of big news has come for Ademuyewo in the first half of 2024. She participated in this year’s cohort of the Google for Startups Accelerator Program-North America, which she says helped to gain traction in her fundraising amid a bear market.

The result? Early this month, Lokum announced a raise of $700,000 in pre-seed funding, which will be allocated to improving and enhancing the existing technology. Those funds came from Houston investors including Aileen Allen, of the Houston Angel Network, Mercury, and The Artemis Fund; and Matt Miller, former Liongard product executive, as well as from Houston-based VC firm South Loop Ventures. More came from the non-local JP Morgan and Techstars.

Today, Ademuyewo is devoted full-time to Lokum, though she still practices her favorite combination of science and art on weekends in order to maintain her licensure.

“I will always be clinical, that will never change,” she says. “Part of that is just staying close to the problem and the people who are experiencing it, I think that is exactly the right thing for me to be doing.”

Ayoade Joy Ademuyewo founded Lokum last year to create a solution to better connecting medical specialists with health care facilities nationwide. Photo courtesy of Lokum

Houston innovator raises pre-seed funding for health care staffing platform

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A Houston health care innovator is celebrating an oversubscribed round of pre-seed funding to improve on her startup's unique staffing platform.

Ayoade Joy Ademuyewo founded Lokum last year to create a solution to better connecting medical specialists with health care facilities nationwide. The new platform, which cuts out the middleman and lowers staffing costs, raised $700,000 in pre-seed funding that will go toward further development of the technology.

"Healthcare organizations spend $26 billion annually to support a crippling dependence on third-party agencies for connecting with clinical staff," Ademuyewo says in a news release. "Technological solutions that are pointed precisely to streamline and strengthen the relationships between highly specialized clinicians and their future employers are vital to alleviating this detrimental dependance, and central to our mission.

"I'm incredibly proud to have earned the trust of my colleagues, investors, team, and mentors in solving this complex problem."

Ademuyewo raised the round with support from local investors, including Aileen Allen, an adviser and investor associated with the Houston Angel Network, Mercury, and The Artemis Fund; and Matt Miller, former Liongard product executive, as well as from Houston-based VC firm South Loop Ventures. Techstars and JP Morgan also contributed to the round.

"Lokum has found a way to disrupt an organically inefficient and expensive market with an elegant solution that doesn't just save hospitals time and money, but also increases the pool of specialty providers in a market that is consistently strapped for such expertise," Jerry Varnado, venture partner at South Loop Ventures, adds. "This is what disruption in healthcare looks like — scalable commercial solutions that contribute towards better patient care, and we're happy to be part of Lokum's journey."

Ademuyewo has the idea to start Lokum after her experience as an independent contract nurse anesthetist amid the height of the pandemic as she witnessed third-party recruitment agencies take advantage of medical professionals like herself.

Now, the platform's early pilot, which focuses on clinicians in anesthesiology, has served clients across nearly 200 hospitals and surgery centers in 20 states. Ademuyewo also participated in 2024’s cohort for the Google for Startups Accelerator Program-North America, where she spent 10 weeks developing and building her company and platform.

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Houston startup funding surpasses $1B in 2025 despite national slowdown

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Houston-area startups raised more than $1 billion in venture capital during the first half of 2025 — almost double the haul for the first half of last year.

According to the new PitchBook-NCVA Venture Monitor, Houston-area startups raised $417.2 million in the second quarter of this year, compared with $281 million during the same period last year. In the first quarter of 2025, local startups collected $607.5 million in venture capital, compared with $281 million during the same period a year earlier.

Based on those figures, Houston-area startups picked up slightly over $1 billion in VC during the first half of this year, compared with $535 million in the first half of 2024.

Nationally, startups gained almost $70 billion in VC in the second quarter, down 25 percent from the same period a year ago, the PitchBook-NCVA Venture Monitor says.

Nizar Tarhuni, executive vice president of research and market intelligence at PitchBook, explained that “the VC landscape continues to navigate a fragile recovery” and is constrained by economic uncertainty.

However, startups in certain sectors are poised to attract a great deal of attention and venture capital over the next several years, according to the report.

“Companies operating in AI, national security, defense tech, fintech, and crypto — sectors aligned with the administration’s priorities — are attracting disproportionately more investor interest, and this trend will likely continue throughout President Donald Trump’s term,” the report says.

The AI sector accounted for 64 percent of VC deal value in the first half of 2025, according to the report.

Houston space companies land $150M NASA contract for vehicles and robots

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Houston-based MacLean Engineering and Applied Technology Services LLC, known as METECS, has received a five-year contract from NASA to develop simulations and software services for space-based vehicles and robots, with a maximum value of $150 million.

Two other Houston-area companies, Tietronix Software Inc. and Vedo Systems LLC, were assigned as subcontractors for the award.

"This award is a strong testament to NASA’s continued trust in the quality of our work and their confidence in our ongoing support of the human spaceflight program," John MacLean, president of METECS said in a release.

According to NASA, the awardees are tasked with providing:

  • Simulation and software services for space-based vehicle models and robotic manipulator systems
  • Human biomechanical representations for analysis and development of countermeasure devices
  • Guidance, navigation, and control of space-based vehicles for all flight phases
  • Space-based vehicle on-board computer systems simulations of flight software systems
  • Astronomical object surface interaction simulation of space-based vehicles
  • Graphics support for simulation visualization and engineering analysis
  • Ground-based and onboarding systems to support human-in-the-loop training

The contract is called Simulations and Advanced Software Services II (SASS II), and begins in October. This is the second time METECS has received the SASS award. The first also ran for five years and launched in 2020, according to USASpending.gov.

METECS specializes in simulation, software, robotics and systems analysis. It has previously supported NASA programs, including Orion, EHP, HLS, Lunar Gateway and Artemis. It also serves the energy, agriculture, education and construction sectors.

Tietronix Software has won numerous awards from NASA. Most recently, it won the NASA JSC Exceptional Software Award (2017). Some of its other customers include Houston Independent School District, Baylor College of Medicine, DARPA and Houston Methodist.

Video Systems offers software for implementing human-rated, AI and autonomous systems, as well as engineering services to address the needs of spaceflight and defense. The company has previously worked with NASA and METECS, as well as Axiom Space and defense contractor Lockheed Martin.

The three companies are headquartered near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.