IBM and Boxes recently partnered to integrate the IBM watsonx Assistant into Boxes devices, providing a way for consumer packaged brands to find out more than ever about what its customers like and want. Photo courtesy of Boxes

With the help of a new conversational artificial intelligence platform, a Houston startup is ready to let brands get up close and personal with consumers while minimizing waste.

IBM and Boxes recently partnered to integrate the IBM watsonx Assistant into Boxes devices, providing a way for consumer packaged brands to find out more than ever about what its customers like and want.

The Boxes device, about the size of a 40-inch television screen, dispenses products to consumers in a modern and sustainable spin on the old-fashioned large vending machine.

CEO Fernando Machin Gojdycz learned that business from his entrepreneur father, Carlos Daniel Machin, while growing up in Uruguay.

“That’s where my passion comes from — him,” Gojdycz says of his father. In 2016, Gojdycz founded Boxes in Uruguay with some engineer friends

Funded by a $2,000 grant from the University of Uruguay, the company's mission was “to democratize and economize affordable and sustainable shopping,” in part by eliminating wasteful single-use plastic packaging.

“I worked for one year from my bedroom,” he tells InnovationMap.

The device, attached to a wall, offers free samples, or purchased products, in areas of high foot traffic, with a touch-screen interface. Powered by watsonx Assistant, the device asks survey questions of the customer, who can answer or not, on their mobile devices, via a QR code.

In return for completing a survey, customers can get a digital coupon, potentially generating future sales. The software and AI tech tracks sales and consumer preferences, giving valuable real-time market insight.

“This is very powerful,” he says.

Fernando Machin Gojdycz founded Boxes in Uruguay before relocating the company to Greentown Houston. Photo courtesy of Boxes

Boxes partnered in Uruguay with major consumer brands like Kimberly-Clark, SC Johnson and Unilever, and during COVID, pivoted and offered PPE products. Then, with plans of an expansion into the United States, Boxes in 2021 landed its first U.S. backer, with $120,000 in funding from startup accelerator Techstars.

This led to a partnership with the Minnesota Twins, where Boxes devices at Target Field dispensed brand merchandise like keychains and bottles of field dirt.

Gojdycz says while a company in the Northeast is developing a product similar in size, Boxes is not “targeting traditional spaces.” Its software and integration with AI allows Boxes to seamlessly change the device screen and interface, remotely, as well.

Boxes aims to provide the devices in smaller spaces, like restrooms, where they have a device at the company's headquarters at climate tech incubator Greentown Labs. Boxes also recently added a device at Hewlett Packard Enterprise's headquarters in Spring, as part of HPE’s diversity startup program.

Boxes hopes to launch another sustainable innovation later this year, in universities and supermarkets. The company is also developing a device that would offer refillable detergent and personal cleaning products like shampoo and conditioner with a reusable container.

Since plastic packaging accounts for 40 percent of retail price, consumers would pay far less, making a huge difference, particularly for lower-income families, he says.

“We are working to make things happen, because we have tried to pitch this idea,” he says.

Some supermarket retailers worry they may lose money or market share, and that shoppers may forget to bring the refill bottles with them to the store, for example.

“It’s about..the U.S. customer,” he says, “….but we think that sooner or later, it will come.”

Boxes has gotten funding from the accelerator startup branch of Houston-based software company Softeq, as well as Mission Driven Finance, Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund, and Right Side Capital, among others.

“Our primary challenges are scaling effectively with a small, yet compact team and maintaining control over our financial runway,” Gojdycz says.

The company has seven employees, including two on its management team.

Gojdycz says they are actively hiring, particularly in software and hardware engineering, but also in business development.

Google has named its first class of Latino entrepreneurs for its inclusive fund. Photo via Getty Images

Google taps 3 Houston Latino-led startups for inaugural non-equity cash awards

Money moves

Google announced today that it has selected 50 companies for the inaugural cohort of the Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund.

Nine startups in Texas have been selected — and three of them are bases in Houston. Each company will receive an equity-free $100,000 investment, as well as programming and support from Google, mentorship from technical and business experts, access to free mental health therapy, and more.

The Houston companies selected were:

  • AnswerBite, which supports marketing enterprise teams with social proof videos and customer insights in minutes and has over 300 clients
  • Boxes, which creates devices that combine physical and digital technology to democratize convenient, affordable, and sustainable retail
  • Ease, financial practice operations platform that helps clinicians build new practices from the ground up

“Being selected to attend the inaugural cohort of Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund gets us one step closer towards completing our mission of increasing healthcare access for Black and Latino communities,” says Dr. Mario Amaro, founder and CEO of Ease, in a news release. “The support and excitement that Google continues to have for small business gives us so much confidence in the future of private practice and clinician entrepreneurship.”

The program was founded to shrink the gap in opportunities and wealth for Latinos in the business community who are disproportionately affected by a lack of access to funding.

“We are excited to support these talented Latino entrepreneurs as they build innovative solutions and solve tough problems,” says Daniel Navarro, US marketing lead for Google for Startups, in the release. “I hope the launch of our inaugural Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund not only catalyzes the growth of these incredible Latino-led startups, but also inspires other Latino entrepreneurs, and ultimately generates wealth within the community."

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Texas university to lead new FAA tech center focused on drones

taking flight

The Texas A&M University System will run the Federal Aviation Administration’s new Center for Advanced Aviation Technologies, which will focus on innovations like commercial drones.

“Texas is the perfect place for our new Center for Advanced Aviation Technologies,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a release. “From drones delivering your packages to powered lift technologies like air taxis, we are at the cusp of an aviation revolution. The [center] will ensure we make that dream a reality and unleash American innovation safely.”

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, included creation of the center in the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. The center will consist of an airspace laboratory, flight demonstration zones, and testing corridors.

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi will lead the initiative, testing unstaffed aircraft systems and other advanced technologies. The Corpus Christi campus houses the Autonomy Research Institute, an FAA-designated test site. The new center will be at Texas A&M University-Fort Worth.

The College Station-based Texas A&M system says the center will “bring together” its 19 institutions, along with partners such as the University of North Texas in Denton and Southern Methodist University in University Park.

According to a Department of Transportation news release, the center will play “a pivotal role” in ensuring the safe operation of advanced aviation technologies in public airspace.

The Department of Transportation says it chose the Texas A&M system to manage the new center because of its:

  • Proximity to major international airports and the FAA’s regional headquarters in Fort Worth
  • Existing infrastructure for testing of advanced aviation technologies
  • Strong academic programs and industry partnerships

“I’m confident this new research and testing center will help the private sector create thousands of high-paying jobs and grow the Texas economy through billions in new investments,” Cruz said.

“This is a significant win for Texas that will impact communities across our state,” the senator added, “and I will continue to pursue policies that create new jobs, and ensure the Lone Star State continues to lead the way in innovation and the manufacturing of emerging aviation technologies.”

Texas Republicans are pushing to move NASA headquarters to Houston

space city

Two federal lawmakers from Texas are spearheading a campaign to relocate NASA’s headquarters from Washington, D.C., to the Johnson Space Center in Houston’s Clear Lake area. Houston faces competition on this front, though, as lawmakers from two other states are also vying for this NASA prize.

With NASA’s headquarters lease in D.C. set to end in 2028, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and U.S. Rep. Brian Babin, a Republican whose congressional district includes the Johnson Space Center, recently wrote a letter to President Trump touting the Houston area as a prime location for NASA’s headquarters.

“A central location among NASA’s centers and the geographical center of the United States, Houston offers the ideal location for NASA to return to its core mission of space exploration and to do so at a substantially lower operating cost than in Washington, D.C.,” the letter states.

Cruz is chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Babin is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Both committees deal with NASA matters. Twenty-five other federal lawmakers from Texas, all Republicans, signed the letter.

In the letter, legislators maintain that shifting NASA’s headquarters to the Houston area makes sense because “a seismic disconnect between NASA’s headquarters and its missions has opened the door to bureaucratic micromanagement and an erosion of [NASA] centers’ interdependence.”

Founded in 1961, the $1.5 billion, 1,620-acre Johnson Space Center hosts NASA’s mission control and astronaut training operations. More than 12,000 employees work at the 100-building complex.

According to the state comptroller, the center generates an annual economic impact of $4.7 billion for Texas, and directly and indirectly supports more than 52,000 public and private jobs.

In pitching the Johnson Space Center for NASA’s HQ, the letter points out that Texas is home to more than 2,000 aerospace, aviation, and defense-related companies. Among them are Elon Musk’s SpaceX, based in the newly established South Texas town of Starbase; Axiom Space and Intuitive Machines, both based in Houston; and Firefly Aerospace, based in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park.

The letter also notes the recent creation of the Texas Space Commission, which promotes innovation in the space and commercial aerospace sectors.

Furthermore, the letter cites Houston-area assets for NASA such as:

  • A strong business environment.
  • A low level of state government regulation.
  • A cost of living that’s half of what it is in the D.C. area.

“Moving the NASA headquarters to Texas will create more jobs, save taxpayer dollars, and reinvigorate America’s space agency,” the letter says.

Last November, NASA said it was hunting for about 375,000 to 525,000 square feet of office space in the D.C. area to house the agency’s headquarters workforce. About 2,500 people work at the agency’s main offices. NASA’s announcement set off a scramble among three states to lure the agency’s headquarters.

Aside from officials in Texas, politicians in Florida and Ohio are pressing NASA to move its headquarters to their states. Florida and Ohio both host major NASA facilities.

NASA might take a different approach, however. “NASA is weighing closing its headquarters and scattering responsibilities among the states, a move that has the potential to dilute its coordination and influence in Washington,” Politico reported in March.

Meanwhile, Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who represents D.C., introduced legislation in March that would prohibit relocating a federal agency’s headquarters (including NASA’s) away from the D.C. area without permission from Congress.

“Moving federal agencies is not about saving taxpayer money and will degrade the vital services provided to all Americans across the country,” Norton said in a news release. “In the 1990s, the Bureau of Land Management moved its wildfire staff out West, only to move them back when Congress demanded briefings on new wildfires.”

Houston research breakthrough could pave way for next-gen superconductors

Quantum Breakthrough

A study from researchers at Rice University, published in Nature Communications, could lead to future advances in superconductors with the potential to transform energy use.

The study revealed that electrons in strange metals, which exhibit unusual resistance to electricity and behave strangely at low temperatures, become more entangled at a specific tipping point, shedding new light on these materials.

A team led by Rice’s Qimiao Si, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, used quantum Fisher information (QFI), a concept from quantum metrology, to measure how electron interactions evolve under extreme conditions. The research team also included Rice’s Yuan Fang, Yiming Wang, Mounica Mahankali and Lei Chen along with Haoyu Hu of the Donostia International Physics Center and Silke Paschen of the Vienna University of Technology. Their work showed that the quantum phenomenon of electron entanglement peaks at a quantum critical point, which is the transition between two states of matter.

“Our findings reveal that strange metals exhibit a unique entanglement pattern, which offers a new lens to understand their exotic behavior,” Si said in a news release. “By leveraging quantum information theory, we are uncovering deep quantum correlations that were previously inaccessible.”

The researchers examined a theoretical framework known as the Kondo lattice, which explains how magnetic moments interact with surrounding electrons. At a critical transition point, these interactions intensify to the extent that the quasiparticles—key to understanding electrical behavior—disappear. Using QFI, the team traced this loss of quasiparticles to the growing entanglement of electron spins, which peaks precisely at the quantum critical point.

In terms of future use, the materials share a close connection with high-temperature superconductors, which have the potential to transmit electricity without energy loss, according to the researchers. By unblocking their properties, researchers believe this could revolutionize power grids and make energy transmission more efficient.

The team also found that quantum information tools can be applied to other “exotic materials” and quantum technologies.

“By integrating quantum information science with condensed matter physics, we are pivoting in a new direction in materials research,” Si said in the release.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.