Houston-based Allganize, founded by Changsu Lee, is taking its $35 million in investment funding and changing the game of AI on a global scale. Photo via Getty Images

It’s taken people some time, but most of society is finally doing a collective 180-degree flip on its once guarded view of artificial intelligence in favor of being open to the idea that it can help humankind in a myriad of positive ways.

That’s why Houston-based software development company Allganize recently secured $20 million in series B funding to propel its industry-leading AI answer bot, Alli.

The All-in-One LLM Enabler Platform, which intelligently responds to customers through natural chat conversation flows, while also enabling the automation of up to 80 percent of support tickets, allows customers to get serviced faster while improving employee productivity.

With the latest $20 million investment by InterVest and Murex Partners, that brings the total funding into Allganize to $35 million. That investor confidence will ultimately help catapult the company’s AI solutions to the next level and help target its planned Japanese Stock Exchange listing by 2025.

“We will lead the expansion of corporate-specific LLM app markets and accelerate the distribution of enterprise automation AI in USA, Korea, and Japan,” says Changsu Lee, CEO of Allganize. “We are dedicated to empowering companies to develop custom LLM applications, enabling practical tasks execution and work automation.”

From programmer to prototype

Allganize’s plans to go public in 2025 stems from Lee’s early ties to Japan. While Lee is originally from Korea, he got his start in Japan, where he was able to secure his first job as a programmer at a gaming company and years later the first investment for the first company he started, ABLAR.

“I'm originally from Korea and when I got a scholarship from the Japanese government, and I went to the research laboratory of Tokyo Institute of Technology, I was not able to speak Japanese at all,” Lee tells InnovationMap. “But that one year actually changed my life. I could speak Japanese while I was there, and I was able to learn a lot of Japanese cultures, and there in the social system, I became a big fan of Japan, and then after that, so I was really looking for an opportunity to do business with Japan, or in Japan.

“I was originally trying to start a company in Japan, and I started to work as a programmer in a gaming company, and at night time, and also the weekends, I was actually building a product to start a company," he continues. "So back then, that product name was ‘Search for You.’ It was every single person's search history, the trees, then if we can find somebody else who's already advanced, but pretty similar search tree, then I was thinking, we can probably, give better suggestions or the recommendations. This is future knowledge that you could probably expect to learn, and if we can have a million users, then we can leverage, those search histories from Google."

Changsu Lee is the CEO of Allganize. Photo via LinkedIn

From there, Lee built the prototype, while making the bulk of his decisions from Japan. Later, while back in Korea, he expanded his business into Japan and met the biggest VC of Japan at an event in Korea and gave a quick pitch of his company’s service. Ultimately, he got the funding and hired Allganize co-founder Yasuo Sato, who he’s been working with for more than 11 years now.

For Lee, it all comes back to where his first idea and mission was believed in and supported, and that place was Japan. Not surprisingly, the bulk of Lee’s customers are in Japan, and it was there that he began his AI journey, by cutting his teeth in machine learning.

“After changing the company name to 5Rocks, we were providing analytics and marketing automation solutions for mobile game companies,” says Lee. “So even back then, we were actually using machine learning, but it was not deep learning. We were using machine learning to predict every single gamer's remaining lifetime in the game. For example, how many days or how many months is this gamer going to stay in the game and how much money are they going to spend in the game for their game items?

“We were predicting this by using machine learning," he continues. "And after we were acquired by the mobile advertising company, I worked as the SVP of the platform there, and I actually got the opportunity to learn the deep learning.

If it’s possible to dig deeper into deep learning, that’s exactly what Lee did as the senior vice president of Tapjoy. Selling his first company and staying onboard in a much more limited role allowed Lee to have a sort of paid internship or technological rotation program into AI and deep learning, which he believed was going to completely change everything and, as a result, was to be the major foundational key to his next venture, Allganize.

Japanese IPO on the horizon

Fast forward to 2023 and the $35 million in investments, Lee and his team are aiming to expand the company’s existing customer base of over 200 enterprises and an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2025.

Take a quick look around and roll call currently known AI platforms. Google Duet, Microsoft Co-Pilot and, of course, ChatGPT quickly come to mind, right?

Spoiler alert: those are all descendants of Allganize’s Alli All-in-One LLM Enabler Platform, which it continues to enhance. Still, Lee and his team still find themselves having to reassure that AI is not the boogeyman movies like The Terminator or Ex Machina have made it out to be.

“I think the most important thing is in how we can leverage and utilize these AI tools,” says Lee. “And because, at the end of the day, it's still a tool, AI is great. It's really powerful. But it's still the tool for helping humans. For example, for white-collar knowledge workers, productivity is completely different when they are using the AI. AI is also more knowledge-focused, and you can answer all the questions that you have.”

Simply put, AI can add not only add to efficiency and productivity, but it can also answer questions before anyone can think to ask them and fill in the blanks to missing information that one didn’t know was missing or could think was missing.

“As powerful as that sounds, AI still can't replace people because people still have to direct it and guide it to where it needs to go,” says Lee. “And because AI's capability is becoming more and more powerful, it’s important for us to learn how to safely train the AI and how to make the good guidelines that we're using for AI.”

With Allganize focused on large language models, they assist businesses to leverage AI to enhance their employees’ knowledge recall and operational efficiency.

“I'm always saying the LLM model is just an engine of the car,” says Lee. “People are buying cars, people are not buying engines. Of course, the engine is important for the car's performance, but people are actually buying cars, not the engines. So, we are really focusing on what kind of application you really want to do in your organization by using LLM.

"And again, our ultimate focus is all the applications because this AI should be used in the daily life of the enterprise, which is the workflow," he continues. “We call them the LLM app. At the moment, the biggest LLM app is called the cognitive search. So when an employee or the customer is asking a question, then AI is understanding all these internal, the best amount of the documents and knowledge bases and databases and they can give comprehensive correct answers to the users. ... Then AI can actually give better answers and they can also give you another suggestion on what to do next. So, that is the biggest application.”

Additional applications include comparing labor agreements in the labor department or on the human resources side, screening several hundred resumes to find who is the best candidate for an open job requisition. Bonus point: it does all of this without the implicit bias that has been historically problematic for HR teams in their recruiting process.

Allganize is also able to create applications without traditional coding like Java and Python.

“Yeah, that is possible because of the LLM,” says Lee. “Because the LLM is such an amazing AI. So, it can handle most of the logics and data. It has been handled only by the software code. But now, the LLM doesn't cover these things. And so users, like somebody who wants to build any of those complicated workflow automations, they don't really need to write a code and they can just use LLM. And then they can just do visual flowcharts, like the old way. And then that is our app. And then all these things are done just like magic.”

Certainly, there’s been quite a bit of “magic” coming from Allganize and that’s all because of Lee and his innate ability to identify problems that need to be solved before they develop and create applications and solutions to address them ahead of time.

“I think two main things are necessary to get to this point with Allganize,” says Lee. “The first thing is expertise in AI, and the second thing is real domain knowledge.

“And I have been working in enterprise, including telecommunications and gaming a little bit more than 20 years. So, how enterprise is working and how the workflow is being defined and how the company and the teams are collaborating, and I have been with it for 20 years. In my academical background, it's all about AI. And I'm writing a code and seeing the very technical details of all these AI models.”

Lee learned a lot during and after selling his first company that he founded, which put him on the correct path to get the funding needed to realize his dream for Allganize.

“I really want to make this a company which can go long and then big,” says Lee. “And that's why we are working on going public. We are doing business in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. And at the moment, Japan is our biggest market. So, we are going to go public in Japan in 2025. And from that point, we're going to accelerate our global expansion.”

Allganize recently closed a $20 million series B round of funding, bringing its total amount raised to $35 million. Graphic via allganize.ai

Houston AI company raises $35M, plans for Japanese IPO

fresh funding

A Houston tech startup with an artificial intelligence technology has announced it's raised two rounds of funding as it plans to continue developing its product and IPO in Japan.

Allganize recently closed a $20 million series B round of funding, bringing its total amount raised to $35 million, according to the company. Allganize developed Alli, an all-in-one platform for enabling large language models, that's used by over 200 enterprise and public companies globally, including Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Nomura Securities, Hitachi, Fujitsu, and KB Securities.

The funding will go toward expanding corporate-specific LLM app markets and expanding enterprise automation AI in the United States, Korea, and Japan. The company has a goal of listing on the Japanese Stock Exchange by 2025.

"This investment accelerates our journey towards global expansion and achieving a milestone of listing on the Japanese stock exchange by 2025. Our focus is on leveraging LLMs to revolutionize work productivity. We are dedicated to empowering companies to develop custom LLM applications, enabling practical tasks execution and work automation,” Changsu Lee, CEO of Allganize, says in a news release.

In the latest round, InterVest and Murex Partners joined existing investors ATINUM Investment and Stonebridge Ventures.

"Allganize's generative AI-based services have garnered acclaim for their technological excellence and practicality among global financial firms. We foresee substantial revenue growth following this investment," Kang Dong-min, vice president of Murex, says in the release.

Allganize was founded in 2017 in California and has offices in Houston, Seoul, and Tokyo. The company's customers range from the insurance and financial services to oil and gas, construction, and more.

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CPRIT hires MD Anderson official as chief cancer prevention officer

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The Austin-based Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, which provides funding for cancer research across the state, has hired Ruth Rechis as its chief prevention officer. She comes to CPRIT from Houston’s University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she led the Cancer Prevention and Control Platform.

Before joining MD Anderson, Rechis was a member of the executive leadership team at the Livestrong Foundation, an Austin-based nonprofit that supports people affected by cancer.

“Ruth has widespread connections throughout the cancer prevention community, both in Texas and across the nation,” CPRIT CEO Kristen Doyle said in a news release. “She is a long-term passionate supporter of CPRIT, and she is very familiar with our process, programs, and commitment to transparency. Ruth is a terrific addition to the team here at CPRIT.”

Rechis said that by collaborating with researchers, policymakers, public health leaders and community partners, CPRIT “can continue to drive forward proven prevention strategies that improve health outcomes, lower long-term costs, and create healthier futures for all.”

At MD Anderson, Rechis and her team worked with more than 100 organizations in Texas to bolster cancer prevention initiatives at clinics and community-based organizations.

Rechis is a longtime survivor of Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer that affects the lymph nodes, which are part of a person’s immune system.

6 female-founded startups shaping the Houston innovation ecosystem

meet the finalists

Female-founded businesses reached a new milestone last year. According to payroll company Gusto, female founders launched 49 percent of new businesses in 2024, reaching near parity with male-founded businesses for the first time.

And though they still face challenges, with access to VC funding at the top of the list, those women-led companies are driving major impact in the startup and innovation ecosystem.

The fifth-annual Houston Innovation Awards will honor six women-led startups that are shaping Houston innovation in our Female-founded Businesses category.

The finalists for the 2025 award, selected by our esteemed panel of judges, range from a company developing natural carbon-free fuel to another launching at-home sleep apnea technology.

Read more about these innovative startups and the visionary female founders behind them below. Then join us at the Houston Innovation Awards on Nov. 13 at Greentown Labs, when the winner will be unveiled at our live awards ceremony.

Tickets are now on sale for this exclusive event celebrating all things Houston innovation.

Anning Corporation

Clean energy company Anning Corporation is working to develop geologic hydrogen, a natural carbon-free fuel, using its proprietary stimulation approaches and advanced exploration modeling. The company said that geologic hydrogen has the potential to be the lowest-cost source of reliable baseload electricity in the U.S.

The company was founded by CEO Sophie Broun in 2024 and is a member of Greentown Labs. Last month, it also announced that it was chosen to participate in Breakthrough Energy’s prestigious Fellows Program. Anning raised a pre-seed round this year and is currently raising a $6 million seed round.

Bairitone Health

Bairitone Health is bringing anatomy imaging for sleep apnea to the home environment. The company's platform maps users' anatomy during natural sleep using a facial patch to determine the root cause of airway obstruction. It then offers effective therapies for each patient. The system is currently in the research and development phase and is being used in clinical trials and studies.

The company was founded in 2022 in the Texas Medical Center's Biodesign program by CEO Meagan Pitcher, CTO Onur Kilic and chief medical officer Britt Cross. It was a member of Activate Houston's inaugural cohort and has participated in numerous accelerators and incubators. It raised a pre-seed round last year of $435,000.

Brain Haven

Founded at the University of Houston, Brain Haven is developing neuroscience-based, clinically validated protocols that use sensory stimulation through smell and sound to offer a natural and non-invasive way to activate the brain and preserve neuroplasticity. The company aims to deliver an accessible and affordable way for the aging population to preserve memory, delay cognitive decline and improve quality of life.

The company was co-founded by Gail Aflalo, a graduate student in the University of Houston College of Optometry, and Jokūbas Žiburkus, an associate professor in the department of biology and biochemistry at UH. It was selected to participate in the 2024 Innov8 Cohort, where it won the cohort's Startup Pitch Day, and was included in Class 13 of UH RED Labs. Brain Haven was awarded $70,000 in seed funding from UH in June 2025 to support a year-long research initiative in adults aged 50 and above.

FlowCare

Sugar Land-based FlowCare is developing a period health platform that integrates smart dispensers, education and healthcare into one system to make free, high-quality organic period products more accessible.

The company was founded by CEO Tanu Jain, a registered nurse and product management executive, in 2024. It participated in the TiE Women Program and the Houston Community College Business Plan Competition, placing in the top five in both pitch competitions.

March Biosciences

Houston cell therapy company March Biosciences aims to treat unaddressed challenging cancers, with its MB-105, a CD5-targeted CAR-T cell therapy for patients with relapsed or refractory CD5-positive T-cell lymphoma, currently in Phase 2 clinical trials.

The company was founded in 2021 by CEO Sarah Hein, Max Mamonkin and Malcolm Brenner and was born out of the TMC Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics. The company completed a $29.6 million series A last year and also raised a $4.2 million seed round.

TrialClinIQ

Houston-based TrialClinIQ is an AI-powered clinical trial recruitment platform that helps identify, qualify and enroll eligible patients in appropriate trials faster and more accurately.

The company was founded in 2025 by CEO Jontel Pierce and Janette Obi.

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The Houston Innovation Awards program is sponsored by Houston Community College, Houston Powder Coaters, FLIGHT by Yuengling, and more to be announced soon. For sponsorship opportunities, please contact sales@innovationmap.com.

Former NASA astronaut, official joins Venus Aerospace board

astronaut appointment

Retired Air Force colonel and former NASA astronaut Pamela Melroy, who previously served as deputy administrator of NASA, recently joined the board of directors at Houston-based Venus Aerospace.

Venus Aerospace, a startup founded in 2020, develops rocket engine technology, including rotating rocket detonation engines for hypersonic flights. These engines promise higher power, greater fuel efficiency and lower emissions than conventional rocket engines or jet engines, according to the Interesting Engineering website. The global rocket propulsion market is expected to grow from $9.5 billion in 2025 to $29.9 billion by 2034, according to a forecast by ResearchAndMarkets.com.

“Advanced rocket propulsion has been of interest to me for over a decade, and Venus Aerospace’s recent achievements in demonstrating the stability of rotating detonation rocket engines represent a significant development,” says Melroy, who left NASA earlier this year and is now a self-employed consultant living in Arlington, Virginia.

Melroy, a member of the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, has built an illustrious career in the aerospace sector. Aside from being a NASA official, she was:

  • One of only two female astronauts to command a space shuttle mission
  • Deputy program manager of Orion space exploration initiatives at aerospace and defense contractor Lockheed Martin
  • Senior technical adviser and director of field operations for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, where she came up with the first safety guidelines for commercial human spaceflight
  • Deputy director of the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
  • An adviser for the establishment of the Australian Space Agency

Venus Aerospace said in a news release that as a leader at three federal agencies, “Melroy shaped America’s strategy in space, accelerated commercial space partnerships, and deepened space exploration.”

Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and CEO of Venus Aerospace, called Melroy “a preeminent leader in the world of aerospace.”

In May, Venus Aerospace completed the inaugural test flight of its rotating detonation rocket engine. The startup, whose headquarters is at the Houston Spaceport, says it’s the only company in the world that has manufactured a flight-proven, high-thrust rotating detonation rocket engine.

On the horizon for Venus Aerospace is production of Stargazer M4, a high-speed aircraft capable of two-hour global travel.

Venus Aerospace’s investors include Airbus Ventures, America’s Frontier Fund, Trousdale Ventures, and Prime Movers Lab. The startup also gets support from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFWERX), the Air Force, NASA and DARPA.

Jordan Blashek, co-founder and managing partner of America’s Frontier Fund, which backs startups creating breakthrough technologies, said his firm’s investment in Venus Aerospace “underscores our focus on supporting American companies that are revolutionizing industries of the future.”

“With recent hypersonic advancements from China and Russia, safeguarding American innovation and securing our industrial base has never been more urgent,” Blashek added. “Venus Aerospace is poised to redefine hypersonic flight and ensure America’s continued leadership in aerospace innovation.”

Since its founding, Venus Aerospace has raised $78.3 million in investments, according to PitchBook data.