Houston VC conference returns to prioritize decarbonization, curated connections

can't miss event

Venture Houston is back next month. Here's what you need to know about this year's changes. Photo via LinkedIn

In two weeks, hundreds of investors, corporate partners, and startups will convene to tackle topics of decarbonization, innovation, and investment. The annual event is also prioritizing something this year — connections.

In its third year, Venture Houston — taking place on Rice University's campus on September 7 — has a theme of "decarbonization in a digital world," but that's not the only thing different this year. The one-day conference has added on a unique event on September 6 to help engage around 50 investors with over 100 Houston startups.

The new activation is called Capital Connect, and HX Venture Fund will matchmake investors and startups for one-on-one meetings meant to spur collisions and collaboration.

"It's not a pitch competition — it doesn't have the stress of that," Sandy Guitar, general partner of HX Venture Fund, tells InnovationMap. "It's really just a way of connecting with a longer term horizon. We didn't want to limit it just to those who are currently raising, but actually include people who maybe just raised six months ago or are not going to raise for 12 more months, but might still want to be in the room."

The official day of the conference will also feature networking opportunities, including a breakfast hosted by DivInc, as well as networking breaks throughout the day.

"Based on feedback we received last year, networking was one of the things that was most celebrated about Venture Houston 2022," Guitar says. "All that space and time — the opportunity to allow people just to connect with one another. So, we're making sure that's a key part of this year as well."

Last year's keynote panel featured Gwyneth Paltrow, who shared her own founder's journey on the Venture Houston stage. This year's keynote address will be with Carmichael Roberts, investment committee co-lead of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which was founded by Bill Gates to support climate change innovation.

While the topic of decarbonization might sound narrow, Guitar emphasizes that this event will not just be for the energy industry. Business everywhere — but especially in Houston — has an increased calling to decarbonization.

"I do think it's important to see the decarbonization not as a hard tech event, but as everything that touches carbon, which is basically everything in our planet in just the coal previously," she says. "Everything we make and use touches the climate."

Guitar adds that HXVF expects a crowd of around 1,000 people to attend the event this year, which would make it one of the largest VC-focused events ever to be held in the region. InnovationMap and EnergyCapital are media partners for the event.

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Houston leads U.S. in population growth for 2025, Census says

Boomtown

Imagine that the Houston metro area swallowed a city the size of Pearland in just one year. That’s essentially what happened from 2024 to 2025, with the Houston metro ranking first in the U.S. for population growth based on the number of people.

New estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show the 10-county Houston metro added 126,720 residents from July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025. That’s just shy of Pearland’s roughly 133,000-resident tally.

To calculate population, the Census Bureau counts births, deaths, new residents, and moved-away residents.

Region’s population approaches 8 million

On July 1, 2025, the Houston metro’s population hovered slightly above 7.9 million, up 1.6 percent from the same time in 2024. In the very near future, the region’s population should break the eight million mark.

This follows massive growth in the past 20 years. From 2005 to 2025, the region’s population soared by 39 percent. By comparison, the growth rate from 2021 to 2025 sat at nine percent.

A forecast from the Texas Demographics Center indicates that under a middle-of-the-road scenario, the Houston metro’s population will reach nearly 8.5 million in mid-2030 and more than 9.5 million in mid-2040.

Dan Potter, director of Rice University’s Houston Population Research Center, attributes much of the region’s population surge to people moving to the area from outside the U.S. In Harris County, this means a combination of military personnel returning home, people living or working overseas coming back to the U.S., and immigrants relocating to the U.S., he tells CultureMap.

But Harris County fell short from 2024 to 2025 when it comes to people moving here from elsewhere in the U.S., according to Potter. Counties surrounding Harris County benefited from that trend, drawing new residents who preferred to settle in the suburbs.

“The incredible pull and attraction of the Houston area is its economy, its people, and its affordability, and the significant growth that was observed in 2024 and again in 2025 speaks to the magnetism of the region,” Potter says. “That pull to Houston is too strong to be turned off overnight.”

Cooling economy and immigration shifts slow down growth

Whether looking at urban or suburban places, population growth in the Houston area slowed in 2025 and appears to be slowing even more this year, Potter says.

“A cooling economy and changes to immigration policy are a one-two combination that could knock out the region’s population growth,” says Potter, citing the region’s addition of a less-than-expected 14,800 jobs in 2025 as an example.

Weaker population growth may not be felt evenly across the metro area, according to Potter.

A continuing influx of people from Houston to outlying counties such as Brazoria, Fort Bend, Liberty, Montgomery, and Waller could curb growth in Harris County, Potter said. Why? If the number of people arriving from other other countries flattens or even drops, then there could be “doughnut-style population growth for the next few years, where Harris County and Houston see declines while the suburban counties see an increase.”

Harris County represents 40 percent of region’s population lift

Houston-anchored Harris County accounted for almost 40 percent of the region’s population spike from 2024 to 2025. In one year, Harris County grew by 48,695 residents, or 1 percent, pushing its population past five million. That increase put Harris County in first place for numeric growth (rather than percentage growth) among all U.S. counties.

From 2020 to 2025, Harris County’s growth rate was 6.6 percent. It remains the country’s third largest county based on population, behind Southern California’s Los Angeles County and Illinois’ Chicago-anchored Cook County.

Harris County is on track to surpass Cook County in size in the near future. As of July 1, 2025, a nearly 150,000-resident gap separated population-losing Cook County and fast-growing Harris County.

The Texas Demographics Center predicts Harris County’s population will be 5.37 million in mid-2030 and just short of six million in mid-2040.

Suburban counties see significant population gains

Harris County isn’t the only county in the area that experienced a growth spurt from 2024 to 2025:

  • Waller County’s population climbed 5.69 percent, winding up at 69,858. Its growth rate ranked second among U.S. counties.
  • Liberty County’s population rose 4.4 percent to 121,364, putting its growth rate in eighth place among U.S. counties.
  • Montgomery County gained 30,011 residents, with its population landing at 781,194. That placed it at No. 4 among U.S. counties for numeric growth.
  • Fort Bend County picked up 24,163 residents, arriving at a total of 975,191 and positioning it at No. 8 among U.S. counties for numeric growth. Fort Bend County, the region’s second largest county based on population, is projected to break the one million-resident mark by July 2030, according to the Texas Demographics Center.

“Lower mortgage rates from 2009 to 2022 and the rise of remote work have made suburban housing more attractive, especially for families seeking affordability,” Pramod Sambidi, the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s assistant director of data analytics and research, said last year. “Additionally, suburban areas are seeing more multifamily developments than before the pandemic.”

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

5 Houston-area companies named among world's most innovative for 2026

In The Spotlight

Led by Conroe-based Hertha Metals, five organizations in the Houston area earned praise on Fast Company’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2026.

Hertha Metals ranked No. 1 in the manufacturing category.

Last year, Hertha unveiled a single-step process for steelmaking that it says is cheaper, more energy-efficient and just as scalable as traditional steel manufacturing. It started testing the process in 2024 at a one-metric-ton-per-day pilot plant.

At the same time, Hertha announced more than $17 million in venture capital funding from investors such as Breakthrough Energy, Clean Energy Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Pear VC.

“We’re not just reinventing steelmaking; we’re redefining what’s possible in materials, manufacturing, and national resilience,” Laureen Meroueh, founder and CEO of Hertha, said at the time.

Meroueh was also recently named to Inc. Magazine's 2026 Female Founders 500 list.

Hertha, founded in 2022, says traditional steelmaking relies on an outdated, coal-based multistep process that is costly, and contributes up to 9 percent of industrial energy use and 10 percent of global carbon emissions.

By contrast, Hertha’s method converts low-grade iron ore into molten steel or high-purity iron in one step. The company says its process is 30 percent more energy-efficient than traditional steelmaking and costs less than producing steel in China.

Last year, Hertha said it planned to break ground in 2026 on a plant capable of producing more than 9,000 metric tons of steel per year. In its next phase, the company plans to operate at 500,000 metric tons of steel production per year.

Here are Fast Company’s rankings for the four other Houston-area organizations:

  • Houston-based Vaulted Deep, No. 3 in catchall “other” category.
  • XGS Energy, No. 7 in the energy category. XGS’ proprietary solid-state geothermal system uses thermally conductive materials to deliver affordable energy anywhere hot rock is located. While Fast Company lists Houston as XGS’ headquarters, and the company has a major presence in the city, XGS is based in Palo Alto, California.
  • Houston-based residential real estate brokerage Epique Realty, No. 10 in the business services category. Epique, which bills itself as the industry’s first AI brokerage, provides a free AI toolkit for real estate agents to enhance marketing, streamline content creation, and improve engagement with clients and prospects.
  • Texas A&M University’s Nanostructured Materials Lab in College Station. The lab studies nano-structured materials to make materials lighter for the aerospace industry, improve energy storage, and enable the creation of “smart” textiles.
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This article first appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

UH lands $11.8M for first-of-its-kind early language development study

speech funding

Researchers at the University of Houston have secured an $11.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a first-of-its-kind study of early language development.

Led by Elena Grigorenko, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Psychology, and research professor Jack Fletcher, the study will follow 3,600 children aged 18 to 24 months to uncover how language skills develop at this critical stage and why some children experience delays that can influence later growth.

The NIH funding will also support the development of the new national Clinical Research Center on Developmental Language Disorders at UH, which aims to bring experts from psychology, education, health and measurement sciences to study how children learn language.

“This will be the first national study to estimate how common late talking is using a large, representative sample of Houston toddlers,” Grigorenko said in a news release. “By following these children as they grow, we hope to better understand the developmental pathways that can lead to conditions such as developmental language disorder and autism.”

UH’s team will partner with the pediatric clinic network at Texas Children’s Hospital, where children will be screened for early language development, allowing researchers to identify those who show signs of delayed speech. Next, researchers will follow the cohort through early childhood to examine how language abilities evolve and how early delays may lead to later challenges.

The Clinical Research Center on Developmental Language Disorders will be the 14th national research center established at UH, and will include researchers from multiple UH departments, as well as partners at Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Center for Learning Disorders.

“This level of investment from the National Institutes of Health reflects the significance of this work to address a complex challenge affecting children, families and communities,” Claudia Neuhauser, vice president for research at UH, said in a news release. “By bringing together experts from multiple disciplines and partnering with major health systems across the region, the project reflects our commitment to advancing discoveries that impact our community.”

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